[mikema63]

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-just-announced-a-brand-new-form-of-matter-time-crystals

They are called time crystals, and they sound pretty cool.

[Suntzu]

[ness31]

I still can't figure out what the "matter" is exactly. Crystal would suggest a mineral of sorts..

[Potemkin]

I still can't figure out what the "matter" is exactly. Crystal would suggest a mineral of sorts..

This legitimately seems to be a new phase of matter (rather than a new form of matter per se) - it's basically a crystal made of normal matter whose periodic structure repeats in time as well as in space, because of the quantum entanglement of their spins. This is not just an artefact of the energy source driving the spin flipping, because the period of oscillation of the structure is twice that of the driving lasers. In other words, the crystal has settled into it's own period of oscillation. This means, of course, that it's not in equilibrium but is in its lowest energy state.

The take-home lesson seems to be that so far scientists have restricted themselves to only analysing a very narrow range of types and phases of matter - insulators and metals, which are forms of matter in equilibrium. It is very likely that most matter in the universe is not in equilibrium, which potentially opens up whole new avenues of research.

[Nonsense]

While we're waiting for the papers to be published, we need to be skeptical about the two claims.

This is the trouble & I for one never believe everything that I read.

I look at many an interesting 'scientific' website, which is a good thing to do, as it's pretty amazing at the ideas that our younger generations are able to study with modern analytical tools, but, these 'ideas' still have to transfer into real world applications.

I can well understand matter being quiescent at or near absolute zero, but once any thermal gain is present, the atoms begin to move, this applies at the quantum or even at the Planck level.

People, even scientist think that space is 'empty', it isn't, it is just occupied with very low levels of particles relatively speaking & I am not so sure that the conditions exist naturally that can create these time crystals.

We know that in deep space there are humongous clouds of individual 'spinning' particles or dust, possibly brought about by powerful charged radiation from stars at eventful moments in their lives such as when they go supernova.

I just can't imagine that within any galaxy, that there is matter that's not being influenced enough by it's environment to satisfy the conditions for these crystals to form, even super dense cold planets are subject to their mother star's influence as is known with Pluto.

It's not a normal state of matter to be that isolated or not to be influenced in it's environment from events outside the immediate local space.

As I say, it's interesting, but also exciting what can be achieved inside a laboratory, such as making atoms static & look at how little thermal activity it takes to make any atom move.

[ness31]

This legitimately seems to be a new phase of matter (rather than a new form of matter per se) - it's basically a crystal made of normal matter whose periodic structure repeats in time as well as in space, because of the quantum entanglement of their spins.

Thank you, this helped to explain a lot.

It makes me wonder why these 'phases' weren't analysed before though.