23 May UW scientists study strange material with communications potential
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are taking another look at some long-held ideas about physics.
For one, the Doppler effect. That’s what scientists call the way sounds change as you speed toward and away from them. On a highway, for example, a jackhammer or a siren will sound higher pitched as you approach and lower after you drive past.
But there’s an inverse Doppler effect, too, predicted in the 1940s and first observed in 2003 by British scientists. UW-Madison researchers have found a way to make a material that will cause radio waves pulsed through it to exhibit just the opposite of the Doppler effect.
The discovery, they say, could someday lead to advances in optics and communications equipment.
• Read the full UW-Madison story