{"id":236351,"date":"2026-05-01T22:28:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T03:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/physicists-have-measured-negative-time-in-the-lab"},"modified":"2026-05-01T22:28:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T03:28:23","slug":"physicists-have-measured-negative-time-in-the-lab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/physicists-have-measured-negative-time-in-the-lab","title":{"rendered":"Physicists have measured \u2018negative time\u2019 in the lab"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physicists-have-measured-negative-time-in-the-lab.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As Homer tells us, Odysseus made an epic journey, against the odds, from Troy to his home in Ithaca. He visited many lands, but mostly dwelt with the nymph Calypso on her island. We can imagine that his wife, Penelope, would have asked him about that particular time. Odysseus might have replied, \u201cIt was nothing. In fact, it was less than nothing. Negative five years I dwelt with Calypso. How else could I have arrived home after only ten years? If you don\u2019t believe me, ask her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Quantum particles, it turns out, are just as wily as Odysseus, as we have shown in <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1103\/gjfq-k9dv\" target=\"_blank\">an experiment<\/a> published in <i>Physical Review Letters<\/i>. Not only can their arrival time suggest that they dwelt with other particles for a negative amount of time, but if one asks those other particles, they will corroborate the story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Homer tells us, Odysseus made an epic journey, against the odds, from Troy to his home in Ithaca. He visited many lands, but mostly dwelt with the nymph Calypso on her island. We can imagine that his wife, Penelope, would have asked him about that particular time. Odysseus might have replied, \u201cIt was nothing. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}