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posted by janrinok on Monday July 06 2015, @06:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the is-it-made-of-kyber? dept.

From New Scientist

Ordinary crystals are three-dimensional objects whose atoms are arranged in regular, repeating patterns – just like table salt. They adopt this structure because it uses the lowest amount of energy possible to maintain.

Earlier this year, Frank Wilczek, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, speculated that a similar structure might repeat regularly in the fourth dimension – time.

Wilczek has also theorised that a working time crystal could be made into a computer, with different rotational states standing in for the 0s and 1s of a conventional computer.

The article includes a description (by Tongcang Li from the University of California, and others) of how such a time crystal could be built. Though it will be tricky because building the crystal will need temperatures close to absolute zero.

While Wilczek points out that the heat-death of the universe is, in principle, "very user friendly" for this kind of experiment because it would be cold and dark, there are other issues to consider.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2015, @09:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2015, @09:53PM (#205853)

    No problem. Also that's definitely a Dirac delta in the potential. I only skimmed it but from what he said about phidot, I'd suspect that phi is "multivalued" in the sense that it has multiple branches. But as I say I'd have to read it and quantum mechanics (or field theory, come to that) is very far from my field.

  • (Score: 2) by boristhespider on Monday July 06 2015, @09:54PM

    by boristhespider (4048) on Monday July 06 2015, @09:54PM (#205854)

    Sorry, that was me. Posted via my work machine which I don't use logins (other than email) on.