This conversation belongs in a category I wish were larger on this channel: the experimentalist who also thinks (deeply) about foundations.
Aephraim Steinberg, University Professor of Physics at the University of Toronto, winner of Physics World’s Breakthrough of the Year in 2011, and CIFAR Quantum Information Program Director, is that species!
For basically 30 years, he’s been measuring aspects of physics that others wouldn’t touch: Bohmian trajectories, Heisenberg’s disturbance bound (he showed it was wrong), even where the photon is inside the double slit (which most textbooks will tell you is impossible).
His latest headline result: photons that cause atoms to spend negative time in excited states. Most popular science results like to run with this and say that it proves faster‑than‑light travel or something else about time. But today we go into the meticulous technicalities.
I sat with him at U of Toronto to understand what this all could possibly mean.
We cover:
Negative time is a mea…
Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Curt Jaimungal to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
