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Physicists create time crystal

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G

gaugebozo

Member
Elandyll said:
Not in all directions.

If I understand correctly (and I probably don't), the possibility of having crystals altered both spatially -and- temporaly means a possible "state" change, which means 0 or 1 depending on induced factor (chemical? Electrical? Physical?). Therefore the possibility of memory state, but at possible quantum scale, and with a stability that would be incredibly more robust than what we currently have, as crystals are (I think) much less likely to be affected by Electro Magnetic signals as opposed to say anything that would be metal based (or storing an electrical charge).

Am I close? Like at all?
Click to expand...

This sounds like it's right:

P44 said:
It's not actually turning anything into a crystal.

Basically

Crystals are odd because the internal structure is not symmetrical, it varies (unlike most other things - there might be other stuff by my material science knowhow reaches limits here).

That's odd because the laws of physics are spatially symmetrical (i.e it is equivalent here, on the moon, its all the same everywhere).

Now, these guys figured, if crystals can be nonsymmetric in terms of space, can it be nonsymmetric in terms of time. Turns out it can, by cooling some charged particles (within some crystal I guess) down to close to absolute zero, which is like a 0 energy state. Because of the charged particles repelling each other they create a ring which should be perfect, but each particle has this other property called spin (I'm not going to get into spin it's weird to explain properly) and it's each particles spin interacting with other particles that is causing this nonsymmetry.

These interactions happening at a faster rate than it should be, thus the scientists have made a crystal nonsymmetric with respects to time, i.e Time Crystal.

I haven't done QM in ages so fellow scientitians don't kill me.
Click to expand...
I'm still going to need someone to tell me what they mean by crystals being nonsymmetic. The whole point is that they are repeating structures. Nonsymmetic under what?
 
T

The Beard

Member
George Oscar Bluth II said:
26334985171_9e844a2bc6_o.gif
Click to expand...

Oh, so it's kinda like Inception, but with Benedict Cumberbatch? I think I get it now.
 
P

P44

Member
gaugebozo said:
This sounds like it's right:


I'm still going to need someone to tell me what they mean by crystals being nonsymmetic. The whole point is that they are repeating structures. Nonsymmetic under what?
Click to expand...

Alright, I had a chance to read the article properly (was in bed). I'm going to edit my original post and try to write it up properly.
 
Q

qcf x2

Member
Crystals seem to be one of those things the "wackos/psychics" were on to before the scientists, along with Planet X.

Anyway, I'm kinda cautiously in awe of the possibility and potential of such a thing as quantum crystals.
 
Melon Husk

Melon Husk

Member
Aasir Osu said:
So, a month ago, researchers from UC Santa Barbara and Microsoft published a paper on time crystals, suggesting they could be realized in different experimental setups, including, I think, the successful one performed at Maryland.

I only bring this up because, when that paper was published (see here: Floquet Time Crystals) there was of course a lot of news and blog coverage. At the time, the best article on this subject was from this blog:

Impossible Time Crystals May Actually Be Real

Of course, being best is not saying much, as it's still hard to understand, but this is the only popular article I've seen to date that offers up a slightly clearer explanation of how crystals behave/form - though the MIT article actually tells us what this could be useful for, and fills in some important blanks. It's like the article writers aren't a hundred percent sure themselves what they're describing.

The guy who first proposed this idea, Frank Wilczek, caught a little bit of heck when he first proposed time crystals, so it's nice to see his ideas validated - maybe?
Click to expand...

Following through your link there to phys.org... They explain why it's not so special:
Although spontaneously broken time-translation symmetry has never been observed before, almost every other type of spontaneous symmetry breaking has been. One very common example of a spontaneously broken symmetry occurs in magnets. The laws of nature do not impose which side of a magnet will be the north pole and which will be the south pole. The distinguishing feature of any magnetic material, however, is that it spontaneously breaks this symmetry and chooses one side to be the north pole. Another example is ordinary crystals. Although the laws of nature are invariant under rotating or shifting (translating) space, crystals spontaneously break these spatial symmetries because they look different when viewed from different angles and when shifted a little bit in space.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-09-crystals.html#jCp
Click to expand...

If only we could point magnet's north poles how we wanted.
 
M

Manu

Member
Now, these guys figured, if crystals can be nonsymmetric in terms of space, can it be nonsymmetric in terms of time. Turns out it can, by cooling some charged particles (within some crystal I guess) down to close to absolute zero, which is like a 0 energy state. Because of the charged particles repelling each other they create a ring which should be perfect, but each particle has this other property called spin (I'm not going to get into spin it's weird to explain properly) and it's each particles spin interacting with other particles that is causing this nonsymmetry.

These interactions happening at a faster rate than it should be, thus the scientists have made a crystal nonsymmetric with respects to time, i.e Time Crystal.
Click to expand...

giphy.gif
 
I

Iceman

Member
Dang. I'm writing a short script on this subject. I knew it was coming, but I didn't expect anyone to create a crystal so soon.
 
K

keuja

Member
P44 said:
It's not actually turning anything into a crystal in the sense that you're thinking of crystals.

Previous work found that a 'spatial crystal' is formed when you take some repeating symmetric structure, take it down to its lowest energy state (so you have to lower the temperature to near absolute zero) and you'll find the once repeating symmetric structure is now...not symmetrical, there are bits that are not going along with the symmetry. Obviously you have to push things pretty far to get here, we're talking near -273 celsius, so we're not messing around here. In a nutshell what we're saying here is that the crystals structure where it should be symmetrical in this lowest energy state, it's not - now the structure is depending on where that portion of the crystal is, and depending on where it is. (massive simplification oh god)

Then some clever people thought, we could be able to break symmetry in terms of time. Kick things up a dimension I guess, the same ideas should apply, it's just a little harder to do conceptually. Now, what does symmetry with respect to time actually mean? In this case, it's meaning that the structure of the crystal is dependant on time at it's lowest energy level. So where you would expect these things to just be stationary (because its at its lowest energy level) the positions, the structure of the crystal now depends on the time you observe it at. If i look at it every 10 seconds, I might see exactly the same thing, but if I look at it at 10 seconds and then 13 seconds I might see a different structure. The whole point is in both cases the observable symmetry is broken and is now dependant on some external thing (position in space or time).

So what they've done is they put a line of charged particles together. The charges all repel each other to make a ring. Now this ring should be stationary, so they lower the temperature and what do they spot? Well, the ring of particles is rotating, i.e the position of each particle is dependant on time in its lowest energy state.

On top of that, each particle has a property called 'spin' (nothing to do with spinning). The scientists fire a laser to 'flip' the spin (think of the two terminals on a battery, + and - ; it's not 100% kosher but whatever you get the gist) and this creates a knock-on effect where each particle flips another particles spin like a domino effect. The laser doesn't just fire once, it's like an initial stream of fire, so +, then -, then +, then -. Now the interesting thing they found, was that the knock on flipping effect was happening at twice the rate of the laser flipping and actually completely independent of it. In a nutshell, it sort of showed a cool property of the 'time crystals' in that they clearly have some kind of rate of spin interaction that is like independent of the size of kick you give it, so there's perhaps applications there.

I haven't done QM or Material Science in ages so fellow scientitians don't kill me.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation!I had no clue on what time symmetry was.
 
A

Aasir Osu

Neo Member
Melon Husk said:
Following through your link there to phys.org... They explain why it's not so special:


If only we could point magnet's north poles how we wanted.
Click to expand...

That's interesting, but then I wonder about all the noise - even the new theory paper generated tons of excitement.

By the way, for those of you with a true technical interest in this subject; and can half-way understand the concept; and/or can follow a quantum physics discussion, then just two days ago, one of the co-authors of the Microsoft paper gave a talk about Time Crystals. About 2/3rds or near the end of his talk, he puts up a slide and discusses the Maryland experimental results and describes what they did.

That talk is here: Entanglement In Quantum Systems
 
T

thelooseteeth

Member
Read an article just now to get a clearer idea. It was interesting, but a little out of my reach to fully understand. The concept seems to revolve around freezing ions in an unstable state and causing a chain reaction that perpetuates without further interaction. This reaction does not produce energy, however. That's the gist I got.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
P44 said:
It's not actually turning anything into a crystal in the sense that you're thinking of crystals.

Previous work found that a 'spatial crystal' is formed when you take some repeating symmetric structure, take it down to its lowest energy state (so you have to lower the temperature to near absolute zero) and you'll find the once repeating symmetric structure is now...not symmetrical, there are bits that are not going along with the symmetry. Obviously you have to push things pretty far to get here, we're talking near -273 celsius, so we're not messing around here. In a nutshell what we're saying here is that the crystals structure where it should be symmetrical in this lowest energy state, it's not - now the structure is depending on where that portion of the crystal is, and depending on where it is. (massive simplification oh god)

Then some clever people thought, we could be able to break symmetry in terms of time. Kick things up a dimension I guess, the same ideas should apply, it's just a little harder to do conceptually. Now, what does symmetry with respect to time actually mean? In this case, it's meaning that the structure of the crystal is dependant on time at it's lowest energy level. So where you would expect these things to just be stationary (because its at its lowest energy level) the positions, the structure of the crystal now depends on the time you observe it at. If i look at it every 10 seconds, I might see exactly the same thing, but if I look at it at 10 seconds and then 13 seconds I might see a different structure. The whole point is in both cases the observable symmetry is broken and is now dependant on some external thing (position in space or time).

So what they've done is they put a line of charged particles together. The charges all repel each other to make a ring. Now this ring should be stationary, so they lower the temperature and what do they spot? Well, the ring of particles is rotating, i.e the position of each particle is dependant on time in its lowest energy state.

On top of that, each particle has a property called 'spin' (nothing to do with spinning). The scientists fire a laser to 'flip' the spin (think of the two terminals on a battery, + and - ; it's not 100% kosher but whatever you get the gist) and this creates a knock-on effect where each particle flips another particles spin like a domino effect. The laser doesn't just fire once, it's like an initial stream of fire, so +, then -, then +, then -. Now the interesting thing they found, was that the knock on flipping effect was happening at twice the rate of the laser flipping and actually completely independent of it. In a nutshell, it sort of showed a cool property of the 'time crystals' in that they clearly have some kind of rate of spin interaction that is like independent of the size of kick you give it, so there's perhaps applications there.

I haven't done QM or Material Science in ages so fellow scientitians don't kill me.
Click to expand...

This is roughly my understanding as well
 
B

BladeoftheImmortal

Member
I wish I was smart enough to understand this.

What I'm getting is that by lowering the temperature of the crystal, the inside of it actually slows down and time is different for the crystal itself.

Am I way off?
 
K

Kid Ying

Member
Wow. This could be big. Like absurdly big. Will read the article right now and chat with some peers to get a better understanding, but this is pretty cool. Thanks for sharing
 
K

Kid Ying

Member
Just finished with the article. Ehhh. It's okay. Even a bit groundbreaking, but i was expecting a bit more in terms of understanding some properties of space and time. Luckily it will all go up from there.

Also guys, relax. The abstracts are not that hard to follow. I will make an easy summary: when it's quite cold, particles behave different and time gets craaaazy. That's it.
 
T

televator

Member
Kid Ying said:
Just finished with the article. Ehhh. It's okay. Even a bit groundbreaking, but i was expecting a bit more in terms of understanding some properties of space and time. Luckily it will all go up from there.

Also guys, relax. The abstracts are not that hard to follow. I will make an easy summary: when it's quite cold, particles behave different and time gets craaaazy. That's it.
Click to expand...

So If get inside my fridge, I can use it as a time machine?
 
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