Big Bang Could Be Recreated Inside a Metamaterial

KentuckyFC writes "Metamaterials are substances with a permittivity and permeability that has been manipulated in a way that allows fine control over the behavior of light. They have famously been used to create an invisibility cloak that hides objects from view. Now Igor Smolyaninov, a physicist in the US, has calculated how metamaterials could be used for a much more profound demonstration: to reproduce the behavior of light in various kinds of spacetimes, in particular a (2+2) spacetime (one having two dimensions of space and two of time). His method is to show that there is formal mathematical analogy between the way metamaterials and spacetimes affect light. He goes on to show how a phase transition in a (2+2) spacetime leads to the creation of a (2+1) spacetime filled with photons, an event analogous to the Big Bang." Here are the abstract and the preprint (PDF).

Comments

metamaterials are just periodic structures

[salesbot]

and they don't work at wide bands. setting mu_r and epsilon_r to -1 in an equation is not the same as making a physical metamaterial.

Re:metamaterials are just periodic structures

[EdZ]

We can easily alter our relative flow of time ('speed in time plane') by altering our relative velocity.

Re:Typical Bad Title

[lbalbalba]

From the referenced article : " ... What Smolyaninov is describing is an optical analogue of the Big Bang in which a spacetime is created along with the particles to populate it. "The characteristic feature of this phase transition appears to be a kind of toy "big bang"," he says. In principle that's an experiment that could be done in the lab in which you could watch the Big Bang in action. ... " ... which is 'close enough' for me...

Re:2+2 spacetime?

[Squiffy]

It probably just means the spacetime metric has two positive terms and two negative terms. Instead of

ds^2 = dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2 - dt^2

you have

ds^2 = dx^2 + dy^2 - dt^2 - du^2

Can a real physicist speak to this?

Re:2+2 spacetime?

[radtea]

It probably just means the spacetime metric has two positive terms and two negative terms

That is correct. The paper points out that "due to causality restrictions the analogy is purely formal" or words to that effect.

As someone else pointed out above, the /. article title, which uncritically apes the title of the linked article, is false. A correct title would be "Toy Model Analog of Big Bang Could Be Created Inside Metameterials." As it stands the title is as correct as "Supertanker can float in bathtub" when linked to a story about the latest Fisher Price supertanker bathtub toy.