Is time travel really impossible? Physics has the answer

Scientists have revealed a New knowledge About the fundamental nature of waves So is he Relationship with timewhich can be reshaped Understanding the universe.

For decades, physicists have understood how light interacts with matter, often describing it using standard wave equations. But Assistant Professor Matias Koivurova, from the University of Eastern Finland, decided to challenge this conventional wisdom. He assumed so The wave speed may not always be constantleading to the formulation of “Acceleration wave equation“.

The initial solution to this equation baffled scientists, but when Koivurova collaborated with the Theoretical Optics and Photonics Group, led by Associate Professor Marco Ornigotti from the University of Tampere, they began to unravel its profound consequences. Find out This new framework provided a well-defined direction for the timea Arrow of timeThey also decided to name this fact, which is closely related to the behavior of accelerated waves.

Traditionally, the direction of time has been understood through thermodynamics, where an increase in entropy (unusable energy to do work expressed as the quotient between the heat given up by an object and its absolute temperature) indicates the progression of time. . However, Koivurova’s research shows this The accelerating wave equation creates an arrow of time independently. It allows them to flow in only one direction, providing information about why individual particles appear to have a constant direction over time.

This discovery was published in the magazine opticsIt sheds light on some ancient mysteries of physics and reveals a previously unexplored arrow of time.

The importance of this discovery extends to all wave phenomena in the natural world, making the constant direction of time a general property of nature. progress A new perspective on the relationship between time and wave behaviorwith Far-reaching implications in various scientific disciplines.

One crucial finding of this research concerns the long-standing debate between Abraham and Minkowski, which revolves around… The behavior of a light pulse when it enters a medium. While this debate continued with experimental evidence supporting both sides, Koivorova’s team found that the accelerating wave equation conserves the momentum of light, resolving the dispute and attributing the conservation of momentum to effects related to relativity.

This innovative framework also enables analytical modeling of waves within time-varying materials, which It allows scientists to explore situations that were previously only accessible through numerical simulation. One particularly interesting application involves the study of turbulent photonic time crystals, hypothetical materials in which waves slow down dramatically while their energy grows exponentially. The research shows that this change is the result of the wave being subjected to local curvature of space-time, which violates the principle of conservation of energy.

This extraordinary advance in physics challenges the fundamental understanding of the universe and paves the way for future research. It has far-reaching implications, from everyday optical phenomena to laboratory tests of general relativity. Not only does it provide new insights into the relationship between waves and time, it also provides a glimpse Why time has a preferred direction.