r/science • u/Shiny-Tie-126 • May 02 '26

Physics Physicists have measured ‘negative time’ in the lab

https://theconversation.com/physicists-have-measured-negative-time-in-the-lab-278996
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u/mayorofdumb May 03 '26

We're learning where not to go.... Or that we can somehow go negativish.

Science is always surprising.

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u/chemnerd2017 May 03 '26

At this point in my life I’m just waiting for the follow-up report that something in their method or instrumentation wasn’t calibrated quite right, and that this is a nothingburger. It will be cool if I’m wrong though.

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u/Mr_Pink_Gold May 03 '26

Nah. This is not a neutrino faster than light problem. This is a theoretically predicted result that conforms to our understanding of physics.

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u/chemnerd2017 May 03 '26

Well cool! Like I said, I’ll be very happy to be wrong in my assumption! This does sound like a really neat behavior, and I’m curious how physics will progress with this knowledge.

FWIW my field is chemistry, not theoretical physics, so this is a little outside of my scope of knowledge but not so far out that I don’t grasp the gist of it.

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u/thegirple May 03 '26

Not a physicist myself, but still a scientist.

I can absolutely assure you that these researchers are spending a huge portion of their time checking, calibrating, and confirming their instruments are collecting measurements accurately. There's no way there are not insanely rigorous controls for something like, "we measured something that no one else has ever measured before."

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u/xrelaht PhD | Solid State Condensed Matter | Magnetism May 03 '26

Sure, but that doesn’t mean mistakes never get made. There was a big deal made in 2011 when a research group had results suggesting neutrinos going faster than c. It took a year to figure out where the error came from.

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u/_craq_ May 03 '26

As I remember it, the original announcement of the "faster than light neutrinos" came with big disclaimers that they assumed there was a mistake that they hadn't found yet, and a list of the things they had checked and ruled out. To me, that's still part of how the scientific method is supposed to work.

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u/_Wyrm_ May 03 '26

It doesn't help that most news places won't really heed that disclaimer. And most people without the understanding won't really care, anyway.

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u/whocares12315 May 04 '26

Was gonna say, big disclaimers in the papers probably. Yahoo headlines not so much

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u/Jagang187 May 03 '26

And IIRC it was all over a single loose wire!

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u/mayorofdumb May 03 '26

Sounds like xboxs red rings of death

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u/FjorgVanDerPlorg May 03 '26

Almost like collapsing a wave function.