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18 July 2006

Weird Materials Do Impossible Things.

Light passing through negative index of refraction media, called NIM, does weird things, things that ought to be impossible.

[I]n a NI metamaterial the phase velocity of light travels faster than in a vacuum; light propogates the opposite direction the energy flows; important physics such as the doppler effect are backwards; [and] you get back information you lost as you recover exponentially decaying near-field components of your image.


While theorists are busy publishing articles saying things like "in general, causality and finite signal speed would be violated if any physically realizable wave (signal) suffered 'negative refraction,'" the guys in the lab are "demonstrating the first detection of negative refraction."

I'm blinded by the science and waiting for further developments in this remarkable field.

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