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Negative time experiment clears peer review as photons appear to leave an atom cloud before entering — groundbreaking quantum 'negative time' proven after 1 million test runs
- A University of Toronto team reports photons exiting a rubidium cloud before they enter it, indicating negative time in transit.
- The researchers fired a weak laser beam through the cloud and tracked tiny phase shifts to read atomic excitations during transit.
- The finding emerged after averaging about 1 million runs across multiple parameter sets, totaling around 70 hours of data collection.
- Physicists described the negative time as an effect explainable by standard physics, with no faster-than-light signaling involved.
- The study relates to earlier work showing photons can appear to exit before entering due to group delay, now supported by direct atomic readouts.
- The team emphasizes the result does not enable practical time manipulation or faster-than-light communication.
- The experiment used a cloud of cold rubidium atoms to study photon transit and atomic excitation time.
- The publication in Physical Review Letters confirms peer review after long circulation as a preprint.
- The researchers aim to extend measurements to scattered photons to test balance in excitation time.
- The authors acknowledge the result is primarily a fundamental quantum property with no immediate technology applications.
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