TIme Crystals

Lately, it has been in the news that Google quantum computing researchers (and numerous university researchers) have created the first true time crystal in a quantum computer. 

While it sounds like something out of a Marvel movie, time crystals are a real phenomenon. 

The crystals flip back and forth between two states periodically in time which mimics the regularity of the spacing of molecules in a crystal.

There have been a lot of misconceptions thrown about whether time crystals violate the laws of thermodynamics: conservation of energy or the tendency for entropy to increase. 

Some have even suggested that they achieve the dream of perpetual motion.

This is false and shows an ignorance of the fine print attached to the laws of thermodynamics as well as the real requirements for achieving a time crystal.

First off, time crystals are not perpetual motion machines in that (a) they cannot do mechanical work and (b) they do not exist in a ground or equilibrium state. 

Rather, they are quantum systems that do no work and cannot reach a ground state.  READ MORE

Time Crystal

Google’s quantum computer has been used to build a “time crystal” according to freshly-published research, a new phase of matter that upends the traditional laws of thermodynamics. 

Despite what the name might suggest, however, the new breakthrough won’t let Google build a time machine.

Time crystals were first proposed in 2012, as systems that continuously operate out of equilibrium. Unlike other phases of matter, which are in thermal equilibrium, time crystals are stable yet the atoms which make them up are constantly evolving.

At least, that’s been the theory: scientists have disagreed on whether such a thing was actually possible in reality. Different levels of time crystals that could or could not be generated have been argued, with demonstrations of some that partly – but not completely – meet all the relevant criteria. 

In a new research preprint by researchers at Google, along with physicists at Princeton, Stanford, and other universities, it’s claimed that Google’s quantum computer project has delivered what many believed impossible. 

Preprints are versions of academic papers that are published prior to going through peer-review and full publishing; as such, their findings can be challenged or even overturned completely during that review process. READ MORE