Free Republic

Researchers at Germany’s TU Dortmund University report that they have developed an ultra-robust time crystal. Their study, published in Nature Physics, offers new insights into the potential applications and the physics governing time crystals, and offers a new method for keeping them stable. Time crystals represent a new phase of matter, first theorized in 2012 by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek. Unlike traditional crystals, which exhibit repeating patterns in space, time crystals display patterns that repeat in time. This means their atomic structures undergo periodic motion even without external energy, defying the traditional laws of thermodynamics that govern equilibrium in most...

Eureka! A research team featuring dozens of scientists working in partnership with Google‘s quantum computing labs may have created the world’s first time crystal inside a quantum computer. This is the kind of news that makes me want to jump up and do a happy dance. These scientists may have produced an entirely new phase of matter. I’m going to do my best to explain what that means and why I personally believe this is the most important scientific breakthrough in our lifetimes. However, for the sake of clarity, there’s two points I need to make first: 1. Time crystals...

Microsoft researchers have teamed up with physicists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, to show how time crystals might be possible. First proposed by Nobel-prize winning theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek, time crystals are hypothetical systems that spontaneously break time-translational symmetry (TTS) – a fundamental symmetry in physics. In plain language, they exhibit tiny movements without using energy. Crystals have a rigid arrangement of atoms that break translational symmetry. Their structure is not symmetrical in space, unlike a sphere, which looks the same from all directions. Time crystals break the symmetry of space and time. Wilczek considered a group of...