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posted by janrinok on Tuesday September 13 2016, @08:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the head-explodes dept.

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.
...
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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @10:52PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @10:52PM (#401505)

    a Microsoft research lab

    Hahahahahahahahahahah hahahahahah hahahahahahahahahahahaha Microsoft Research lab hahahahahahah hahahaha

    Hint: Microsoft buys other companies for their research. Then it ignores it, and does whatever the current CEO feels like. Which usually results in a flop. Microsoft is a long history of flop after flop after flop but hey, when you have 90+% market share and there's no other similar alternative, you can get away with it.

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Ken on Tuesday September 13 2016, @11:05PM

    by Ken (5985) on Tuesday September 13 2016, @11:05PM (#401507)

    "...history of flop after flop after flop "

    Isn't that the idea? The most flops? I mean some things are measured in teraflops, petaflops, etc...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @11:18PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @11:18PM (#401509)

      TIL Microsoft never published info on their ultra-computer that crushes the puny supercomputers.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:15PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:15PM (#401763)

        Of course not. They can't tell the public that the only way they found to get Windows run at acceptable speed is to secretly install a miniature ultra-computer inside your PC. ;-)

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Wednesday September 14 2016, @10:10AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday September 14 2016, @10:10AM (#401728) Journal
    You realise that Microsoft Research is a private research organisation with an annual budget of $5bn and regular publications in a large number of top-tier research conferences?
    --
    sudo mod me up
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19 2016, @06:39AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19 2016, @06:39AM (#403637)

      And, much as I like to rag on MS, I've actually seen some good product come out of Microsoft's Research arm.