News Story
Smolyaninov Proposes Big Bang Model Using Metamaterials
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Dr. Igor Smolyaninov
Metamaterials are artificially engineered structures that often contain unusual properties not commonly found in nature. Some metamaterials can reproduce the behavior of light in a variety of spacetimes unlike the dimensions we perceive in the world. These metamaterials allow us see a representation of an entirely different spacetime than that which we normally perceive.
Smolyaninov offers a mathematical demonstration that one metamaterial — representing two space dimensions and two time dimensions — could undergo a transformation leading to the equivalent of a sudden reduction to only one time dimension and the creation of lots of particles. In effect, this would represent a model of the big bang -- a sudden emergence of matter from nothing.
Learn more about Smolyaninov's proposal for a "toy big bang" model in Popular Science and MIT Technology Review, or read Smolyaninov's paper, "Optical models of the big bang and non-trivial space-time metrics based on metamaterials."
Published August 31, 2009