A new study from scientists at the University of Maryland has now captured how microwave radiation interacts with imaginary time delay. This could improve not only sensing and storage devices, but also help probe how information becomes corrupted as light travels through a material. But in quantum field theory, this isn’t imaginary, not in the sense that the tooth fairy is imaginary. “It’s sort of like a hidden degree of freedom that people ignored,” Anlage, a co-author of the study, told New Scientist. Scientists have previously studied the non-imaginary components of this interaction, so the world’s first observation of light experiencing imaginary time helps complete the picture.