Negative Time Found

Quantum physicists are familiar with wonky, seemingly nonsensical phenomena: atoms and molecules sometimes act as particles, sometimes as waves; particles can be connected to one another by a “spooky action at a distance,” even over great distances; and quantum objects can detach themselves from their properties like the Cheshire Cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland detaches itself from its grin. 

Now researchers led by Daniela Angulo of the University of Toronto have revealed another oddball quantum outcome: photons, wave-particles of light, can spend a negative amount of time zipping through a cloud of chilled atoms. In other words, photons can seem to exit a material before entering it.

“It took a positive amount of time, but our experiment observing that photons can make atoms seem to spend a *negative* amount of time in the excited state is up!” wrote Aephraim Steinberg, a physicist at the University of Toronto, in a post on X (formerly Twitter) about the new study, which was uploaded to the preprint server arXiv.org on September 5 and has not yet been peer-reviewed.     READ MORE...

Driving Evolution on Earth

Mounting evidence suggests humans are now a major driving force of evolution on Earth. From selective breeding to environmental modifications, we're altering so much of our world that we're not only now driving the climate, but the direction of life itself.

Now, in a massive project involving 287 scientists across 160 cities in 26 countries, researchers examined how urbanization has influenced evolution on a global scale. They used white clover (Trifolium repens) as a model – a plant native to Europe and west Asia, but found in cities all around the world.

"There has never been a field study of evolution of this scale, or a global study of how urbanization influences evolution," said evolutionary biologist Marc Johnson from the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM).

Collecting more than 110,000 samples along gradients that extended from the cities, through suburbs and out to the country, they found that clover in cities is now more similar to clover in another city a world away than it is to that found in nearby farmland or forests, regardless of climate.

This is an example of parallel adaptive evolution – when separate populations are shaped by the same selective pressure for specific traits in different locations. It shows that the ways humans have changed the environment are having a bigger influence in shaping these traits than natural phenomena like local population genetics and climate.  READ MORE...

Magnetic Ropes Surround Us

The proposed giant tunnel is hundred of light years wide, making it big enough to encompass Earth, our solar system, and even nearby stars. (Image credit: Eduard Muzhevskyi via Getty Images)

Our planet, along with the rest of the solar system and some nearby stars, may be trapped inside a giant magnetic tunnel — and astronomers don't know why.

A tube of vast magnetized tendrils, 1,000 light-years long and invisible to the naked eye, may encircle the solar system, astronomers propose in a new paper. 

Jennifer West, an astronomer at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, made the proposal after an investigation into the North Polar Spur and the Fan Region — two of the brightest radio-emitting gas structures in our galactic neighborhood — revealed that the two structures might be linked even though they are located on different sides of the sky.

"If we were to look up in the sky, we would see this tunnel-like structure in just about every direction we looked — that is, if we had eyes that could see radio light," West said in a statement.

The curving tendrils — which are made of both charged particles and a magnetic field, and resemble long, thin ropes — project outward from the North Polar Spur and the Fan Region. 

Not only could the strange cosmic ropes link the two regions, but they could form something akin to "a curving tunnel" where the tendrils are like "the lines formed by the tunnel lights and road lane marker," the researchers said.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Earth Surrounded by Giant Tunnel

Mysterious structures in the sky that have puzzled astronomers for decades might finally have an explanation – and it's quite something.

The North Polar Spur and the Fan Region, on opposite sides of the sky, may be connected by a vast system of magnetized filaments. These form a structure resembling a tunnel that circles the Solar System, and many nearby stars besides.


"If we were to look up in the sky," said astronomer Jennifer West of the University of Toronto in Canada, "we would see this tunnel-like structure in just about every direction we looked – that is, if we had eyes that could see radio light."

We've known about the two structures for quite some time – since the 1960s, in fact – but they have been difficult to understand. That's because it's really hard to work out exactly how far away they are; distances have ranged from hundreds to thousands of light-years away.

However, no analysis had ever linked the two structures together. West and her colleagues were able to show that the two regions, and prominent radio loops in the space between them, could be linked, solving many of the puzzling problems associated with both.

Comparison with a real tunnel showing orientation. (Left: Pixabay/wal_172619/J. West; Right: Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory/Villa Elisa telescope/ESA/Planck Collaboration/Stellarium/J. West)

"A few years ago, one of our co-authors, Tom Landecker, told me about a paper from 1965, from the early days of radio astronomy. Based on the crude data available at this time, the authors (Mathewson & Milne), speculated that these polarized radio signals could arise from our view of the Local Arm of the galaxy, from inside it," West explained.

"That paper inspired me to develop this idea and tie my model to the vastly better data that our telescopes give us today."  READ MORE...