Physicists have created “time crystals”, a new form of matter that consists of atoms following a repeating pattern in time. This impossible material “open the door to a whole new world of nonequilibrium phases,” since they never ‘settle down’ to thermal equilibrium. To create them, the team bombarded atomic ions with laser pulses, thus generating a magnetic field, and used a second laser to partially flip the spins of the atoms. Continue reading for another video and more information.
“The idea of a time crystal was first proposed in 2012 by physicist Frank Wilczek, who suggested a type of matter that can break translational symmetry in time. With the recent breakthrough, physicists now say the new form of matter has implications for the future of quantum computing,” reports The Daily Mail.
