Physicist Moti Fridman and colleagues at Cornell University, USA, were able to create a "hole in time" by manipulating the speed of light, Science News reported. This experience was publicly demonstrated online on July 11 at arXiv.org
The "temporal hole" was created in an optical fiber cable using two "temporary lenses", special silicon devices created earlier to accelerate the movement of information (in the form of a photon beam) along the fiber. Part of the light passing through the lens is accelerated, and part, on the contrary, begins to move more slowly. As a result, a dark section appears in the cable. Another lens, further down the cable, collects the light back. Everything that happens in the resulting dark segment is not recorded in any way. That is, it seems to disappear in a time hole.
This interesting anomaly lasted only about 15 trillionth of a second. In theory, increasing the distance between the lenses can increase this time by up to a whole microsecond. But no more: a further increase in the size of the "hole in time" is hindered by imperfect equipment.
The experience of Friedman and his colleagues was a practical confirmation of the theoretical calculations of the team of Paul Kinsler of Imperial College London, published in the February issue of the Journal of Optics ("Optical Journal"). Keenler says 15 trillionths of a second is far more than he hoped to achieve with current technology. To create large "time holes" requires special metamaterials, the properties of which will change not only in space (as in modern materials), but also in time.
Manipulations with the optical properties of objects and materials can make many of mankind's dreams come true - for example, about the "invisibility cloak". By the way, as recently as February it became known that British scientists managed to create such a cloak based on calcite, one of the most common crystalline materials.
Another recent advance in this area was the creation of a metamaterial that allowed objects to be hidden in the visible spectrum of light. All previously known meta-materials worked only for radiation in the range invisible to the naked eye. The difficulty was that the invisible spectrum was longer than the visible wavelength. The structures of the new metamaterial are so small that they can manipulate even such short waves.