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I know what you're thinking after you read that title: If the wavelength is infinitely long, isn't it a line rather than a wave?
In 2015, researchers, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) developed the first on-chip metamaterial with a refractive index of zero, meaning that the phase of light could be stretched infinitely long. The metamaterial represented a new method to manipulate light and was an important step forward for integrated photonic circuits, which use light rather than electrons to perform a wide variety of functions.
Now, SEAS researchers have pushed that technology further - developing a zero-index waveguide compatible with current silicon photonic technologies. In doing so, the team observed a physical phenomenon that is usually unobservable—a standing wave of light.
The research is published in ACS Photonics.
There's a lot more in the full story about the difficulties of proving the wavelength is infinite and what can be down with this new material with a refractive index of 0.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:36PM (5 children)
(you don't know shit what I'm thinking)
If wavelength is infinitely long it means an infinite wave velocity. Which is consistent with a zero refractive index (=the ratio of the velocity of light in a vacuum to its velocity in a specified medium) - to have an zero refractive index, the speed of light in the medium needs to be infinite.
Which means instantaneous propagation of information over the distance inside the meta-material.
If this is not... umm... an infinite stretch of the relativity theory, I don't know what it is (therefore I need to RTFOriginalA rather than the digested phys.org crap).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:55PM (1 child)
I was more thinking in lines of "colour". What "colour" would it have (all colours?) and how would you detect it? Could we detect these light waves when we would scan the sky (some sort of advanced alien signal, or natural sources)?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:04PM
Same colour as ever, as the frequency of oscillation as seen from a certain point in space is not modified.
The only difference you'll experience: no Doppler in a place where the speed of light (the wave) is infinite.
Sky is the wrong place to look for such effects. You will need to search for advanced aliens inside specially designed metamaterials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:18PM (2 children)
There's a difference between phase velocity, group velocity and signal velocity. Hint: It is the last one which is limited by c. It is the first one which gets infinite with infinite wavelength.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:36PM
And it is a gross failure of understanding between these that always gets people (which includes the occasional Ph.D.-types that really should know better) all hot and bothered about faster-than-light communication and such.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12 2017, @11:20PM
wouldn't phase velocity go to 0 with infinite wavelength?
please educate, so curious!
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:59PM (4 children)
That is totally not what I was thinking after reading the title. A wave is an oscillation so it's better described as a curve then a line. By any mathematical definition back to ancient times a line can't have curvature cause then it's no longer a line, but a curve. Also if they are just observing it that is some pretty sloppy proof for it going on to infinity. Isn't this what everyone was thinking!?
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:22PM
I don't know what ancient times you refer to, but the guys that invented differentials and gave a definition for the curvature are dead for a long time.
The curvature in any given point on the trajectory is defined [wikipedia.org] in the terms of the cross-product between the instant velocity of the trajectory and the acceleration on the trajectory.
With a constant curvature you get a circle - the velocity is always tangent to trajectory, the acceleration is always normal and centripetal.
Do it on a line and the velocity and acceleration are collinear - which leads to a zero cross product, thus a straight line has zero-curvature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 10 2017, @07:15PM (2 children)
You are beeing to lose with the defernition: better described first as a curve, then as a line. The loose use of "then" for "than" is what will finally destroy physics as we know it.
You have put your finger right on the tight spot. I recommend you give the Docta Ignorantia by Nicholas of Cusa. He asserts that if we take a plane figure, such as a triangle, and extent two sides to infinity, the triangle becomes a line. Same would apply to an infinite curve. And an infinite line, (this is what will cook your noodle later, Neo), having no length, or an in-finite length, is equivalent to point, which also has no length. Cusa's point is that the infinite is just the infinite, so the finitely large is identical to the infinitely small. But, he was a philosopher, not a scientist.
What I want to know is when do they predict the observation of the infinite wavelength to be finished?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @02:03AM (1 child)
Are you sure you're qualified to make such a statement?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday October 11 2017, @04:04AM
We have been over this before, AC. Perhaps you missed the Protocols of Soylentil Grammar Nazis? Everyone who criticizes the grammar mistakes in a post must include one or two (or more) mistakes in the critical post. We are gods with feet of clay.
(Score: 2) by BK on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:22PM (1 child)
Whelp, I guess I'm down with [thefreedictionary.com] that.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday October 10 2017, @06:53PM
I'm still missing my bed enough this morning to have read it as an infinitely soft material to make pillows and comforters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:30PM (2 children)
Infinite wavelength?
Isn't that what an electrician would call DC?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:58PM (1 child)
An uneducated one, maybe.
An educated one will call DC just a stationary value for the current.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:49PM
I call you a bunch of shit-for-brain ACs.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday October 10 2017, @06:53PM
The real story is that optics (you know, lenses and prisms and stuff) used to be really simple and the angle that stuff reflects at across an intersection of materials was strictly related to the ratio of bulk speed of light in the materials and a surprisingly small amount of math.
Turns out it works really well on all reflecting stuff and materials up to relatively recently.
Now we can build stuff where exotic materials are applied to do weird as hell things with light reflections.
IF (and this is CRUCIAL) IF you take the weird as hell reflection data and pump it back into the old fashioned "all that matters is speed of light" equations, then you get all this ridiculous shit about light going faster than the speed of light or slowing to a stop or all kinds of ridiculous stuff.
Like, there's multiple simplifications of maxwells equations and all that. And if you use really weird exotic metamaterials, and incorrectly use one specific massive simplification to see what that implies, THEN you get stupid results like negative speeds of light or whatever.
They are cool materials.
Maybe the best SN automobile analogy is you use a simplification of formulas of performance of steel cars and if you apply those steel eqns to a wooden car from 1899, suddenly wood cars have negative internal volumes because of structural thickness and negative payload capacities and all kinds of dumb stuff like that. That doesn't mean if you build a wood automobile it actually stores magical negative space and carries negative mass payloads, it just means you can't build a wood car like you'd build a steel car and when you build a wood car like you'd build a wood car using wood car engineering equations suddenly your "wood" steel car has normal looking volumes and payloads.
Maybe a better analogy would be subsonic and supersonic aircraft don't look the same and aren't designed aerodynamically the same way. So talking about a mach 7 Cessna 152 or arguably a supersonic passenger craft is nonsense.
There are no photons going backward in time with negative mass or zero wavelength or WTF. The are photons bouncing around all weird as hell compared to old fashioned boring materials and the new materials require a more complicated design approach.