For The First Time, Physicists Have Filmed The Oscillation of a Time Crystal

submitted by zyxzevn from sciencealert.com

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[–]Vigte 7 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

The description of what it is, strikes me as very similar to "spin glass" - a so-called "meta material" - which while it sounds like something you build a space ship out of;

For physical systems, such as dilute manganese in copper, the freezing temperature is typically as low as 30 kelvins (−240 °C), and so the spin-glass magnetism appears to be practically without applications in daily life. The non-ergodic states and rugged energy landscapes are, however, quite useful in understanding the behavior of certain neural networks, including Hopfield networks, as well as many problems in computer science optimization and genetics.

Little bit more here, for a few minutes (or as long as you want, lol)

He also talks a bit about Bose-Einstein condensates at 28:15, which relates to the Time Crystals too.

Edit: If I understand his explanation correctly, is that the Bose-Einstein condensates are a kind of barrier to the universe sharing/updating the "blockchain ledger" with the rest of the atoms, allowing you to.... break the laws of physics

[–]Zapped 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

This article helps by explaining what time crystals are.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/mgkzmx/ok-wtf-is-a-time-crystal

And I still don't fully understand what's going on.

[–]zyxzevn[S] 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

As I understand it..
In the experiment they are using a bose-einstein condensate.
That means that the electrons are at their lowest state and will behave more like rotating objects.
They are also more synchronized.
Because there are more levels of rotation, this rotation of the outside electrons flip periodically.
And with this the magnetic field flips, and this is what is recorded in the video.

[–]Rpguy04 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Read the article still dont really get it but it sound like the crystals can change their particle arrangement and whats freaking out the scientists is that if they stimulate the crystals with lets say a laser the crystals will shift but its random. One pulse of the laser can have them shift once, twice, three times. Its random and they don't know why?

[–]Vigte 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

An actual random number generator sounds look a good first application then.

I'm glad you could at least get something of it, all I got was a headache, lol.

[–]iDontShift 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

they seem to be making more of it than I can see a reason too.

like they are tacking on all the probability shit for reasons I can't see.

To take up the coin example again, when the time crystal breaks time-translation symmetry that means that it is making a particular period in time special, which would be like having a 50/50 chance with the coin now, but knowing that if you waited a certain interval of time, say 10 seconds, those odds would change to 75/25.

if you can predict it, then it isn't useful for random numbers.

but whatever...

2016 that a group of physicists working at Station Q, a Microsoft research facility at UC Santa Barbara, figured out a way to correct the theoretical problems with Wilczek's time crystals and provided the stepping stone to actually make them

if microcrap is involved.. it is probably not good.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 4 fun4 insightful - 5 fun -  (0 children)

Now we just need plutonium and a DeLorean.

[–]JasonCarswell 1 insightful - 4 fun1 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 4 fun -  (2 children)

Does this mean that stinky hippie I met was right about his energy crystals?

[–]spinningIntelligence 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

How could you ever have doubted?

[–]JasonCarswell 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Hey

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

fake

[–]forscher 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It isn't the first time.