Physicists have used light to make the imaginary measurable
Borkin Vadim/Shutterstock
It should be impossible to measure an imaginary number in the lab, but a group of researchers have found a way to do so. They produced the equivalent of a magnetic field of imaginary strength, meaning the imaginary quantities in their experiment were measurable.
Imaginary numbers are defined as the square root of a negative number, which is a value that shouldn’t be able to show up on the dials of a measuring instrument. This may make imaginary numbers seem like…
