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Are time crystals just a mathematical curiosity, or could they actually physically exist? Physicists have been debating this question since 2012, when Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek first proposed the idea of time crystals. He argued that these hypothetical objects can exhibit periodic motion, such as moving in a circular orbit, in their state of lowest energy, or their "ground state." Theoretically, objects in their ground states don't have enough energy to move at all.
In the years since, other physicists have proposed various arguments for why the physical existence of time crystals is impossible—and most physicists do seem to think that time crystals are physically impossible because of their odd properties. Even though time crystals couldn't be used to generate useful energy (since disturbing them makes them stop moving), and don't violate the second law of thermodynamics, they do violate a fundamental symmetry of the laws of physics.
However, now in a new paper published in Physical Review Letters, physicists from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and Microsoft Station Q (a Microsoft research lab located on the UCSB campus) have demonstrated that it may be possible for time crystals to physically exist.
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According to the physicists, it should be possible to perform an experiment to observe time-translation symmetry breaking by using a large system of trapped atoms, trapped ions, or superconducting qubits to fabricate a time crystal, and then measure how these systems evolve over time. The scientists predict that the systems will exhibit the periodic, oscillating motion that is characteristic of time crystals and indicative of spontaneously broken time-translation symmetry.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @09:17PM
You go where the physics takes you. For instance, back in the day you could take the Standard Model and say "the physics of this model says there should be a particle here with such-and-such properties". If you find it, it tells you something, and if you don't, well, that tells you something too. But you're starting with a physical model and not just making shit up.