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Science

For the First Time Ever, Scientists Caught Time Crystals Interacting (popularmechanics.com) 51

Posted by BeauHD from the spacetime-continuum dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: For the first time, scientists have observed an interaction of a rare and baffling form of matter called time crystals. The crystals look at a glance like "regular" crystals, but they have a relationship to time that both intrigues and puzzles scientists because of its unpredictability. Now, experts say they could have applications in quantum computing. [...] Researchers say they've collided two time crystals to see what happens next. "Our results demonstrate that time crystals obey the general dynamics of quantum mechanics and offer a basis to further investigate the fundamental properties of these phases, opening pathways for possible applications in developing fields, such as quantum information processing," they explain in a new paper.

In their experiments, they placed two time crystals in superfluid and mixed magnons between them. Magnons are a magnetic quasiparticle that, in this case, led to "opposite-phase oscillations," while the crystals themselves stayed phase stable. What's cool (and, literally, supercooled) is how the matter acts within predictable quantum mechanical ways despite the central quality of wild oscillation patterns over time. "Before this, nobody had observed two time crystals in the same system, let alone seen them interact," lead author Samuli Autti, of Lancaster University, said in a statement. "Controlled interactions are the number one item on the wish list of anyone looking to harness a time crystal for practical applications, such as quantum information processing."
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For the First Time Ever, Scientists Caught Time Crystals Interacting More

For the First Time Ever, Scientists Caught Time Crystals Interacting

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  • Uh oh (Score:4, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday October 01, 2020 @10:59PM (#60563214)

    Last time that happened, the Defiant ended up in orbit around K-7.

    • No that was a due to a Bajoran orb, these are chronotron particles that will take us to... 2024

      • Oh good, an escape from 2020!!!! Tell me it is better. Please be better.

        • Re:Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Friday October 02, 2020 @12:04AM (#60563306) Homepage Journal

          Donald Trump is emperor, but it's okay, because he's really just a puppet with his head impaled on the tentacle of the leader of our alien overlords.

          On the plus side, the murder hornets are dead. On the minus side, so are the honeybees and butterflies and most of the plants, so everyone pretty much Swiftly eats the homeless.

          The good news is that the Zorg'aal (our alien overlords) only eat about 0.1% of all the people on Earth every year, so 99.9% survive the aliens every year (the homeless notwithstanding). Such a low death rate is really no big deal, and totally worth it to defend our right not to wear deodorant. (Deodorant, of course, kills the Zorg'all when they try to feed on you, but why would anyone want to smell like they're scared?)

          Anyway, I hear that China is planning to try some other approach for exterminating the Zorg'aal. I think they called it some kind of winter... new something... new clear winter, maybe? It's supposed to be a blast. We'll see.

          • You forgot the useless population zones in San Francisco.

            And who turned on the filters against anonymous cowards and ascii art?

            • I don't know, but whenever I try to quote anything from the Simpsons longer than D'Oh! it thinks it is ascii art.

              I'm totally gonna have a cow.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Evtim ( 1022085 )

      This is the first glimpse of Dilithium crystals!

      "Dilithium is depicted as an extremely hard crystalline mineral that occurs naturally on some planets. It is believed that this material exists in more than three dimensions at the same time and this is somehow related to its properties. When placed in a high-frequency electromagnetic field, eddy currents are induced in its structure which keep charged particles away from the crystal lattice."

      • EXACTLY the comment I came to make, except mine was just a vague memory from a novel that gave it a four dimensional structure, with extensions into the future and the past, thus enhancing the eddy effect and allowing one to form a "warp field" that can be used to achieve >100% engine efficency.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Reeses ( 5069 )

          And as a side effect of that four-dimensional structure, dilithium crystals need to be cut at the exact moment yesterday, today, and tomorrow in order to shape them. Which makes them really rare.

  • If you think something "exists," you might already have claimed it interacts.

  • Okay ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Friday October 02, 2020 @02:41AM (#60563630)

    In their experiments, they placed two time crystals in superfluid and mixed magnons between them. Magnons are a magnetic quasiparticle that, in this case, led to "opposite-phase oscillations," while the crystals themselves stayed phase stable.

    Now they're just making stuff up. If not, then Shleemypants [fandom.com] is about to show up and send them to time prison.

    • "In their experiments, they placed two time crystals in [bullshit]superfluid and mixed [bullshit]magnons between them. [bullshit]Magnons are a magnetic [bullshit]quasiparticle that, in this case, led to "opposite-phase oscillations," while the crystals themselves stayed phase stable"

      How much funding did they get for this again? :\

      If only the person responsible for inventing ST-Voyager's "particle of the week" thought of getting into this art of scamming....

      • Dude, sometimes things are hard to explain to a layman, at least in a condensed and accurate way.

        • And that's where they get you. Using words that seem like plausable scientific terms, and writing that appears on the surface to be scientificaly sound, in order to get the layman to believe that what they are talking about is legit.

          Kind of like those "Ion braclets", which I hope to $DIETY were not actually laced with ionizing radioactive material. I wouldn't put it past those scam artists to do just that incase somebody decided to check those things out with a dosimeter.

          • I had a chemist coworker who ran a ion chromatograph as his primary job / research, and he wore one of those damn things. I made fun of it once, thinking he was wearing it ironically, but found out otherwise. So I hear ya.

            But, I read over the article and was able to understand the concept. I don't think I'd be able to relate it accurately, however. I do think 'time crystal' is a poor choice and is overly clickbaity.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I thought they were made up but apparent time crystals are real things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Yes it does look like a hoax.

      However, remember this is PopMech: this might be a legit experiment, the description of which is mangled beyond recognition by the magazine to impress the kind of crowd who buys it.

  • When a pseudoscientific article like this is posted on Slashdot, it becomes the trolls' playground.

  • I started reading the article, and it looked like made up jargon soup. I gave up. It is on a par with the astrology that a friend of mine posts on Facebook. Time crystals? Somebody has been watching Doctor Who under the influence of mind altering substances.

    There are plenty of genuine science and mathematics ideas that I cannot get my head around, but this just looked like straight fiction, with a bit of fact thrown in to hold it together.

  • '... The crystals look at a glance like "regular" crystals, but they have a relationship to time that both intrigues and puzzles scientists because of its unpredictability. ...'

    I thought the thing about crystals was their regularity.

  • The energy in the oscillations just goes somewhere we don't understand yet, or perhaps even can't measure, like ever.

    So stop calling it a time crystal, or we get God-particle-like discussions.

    Whoo time crystals, spooky.
    ffs.

  • Was this article generated by a machine for 1 April but the time crystals switched it to now?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      October 1 is the day farthest from April 1. Harmonic echos of April 1 cause weird shit to appear on October 1, then add a day or two for the usual /. posting delays.

  • The scientists are arguing about nomenclature, while the Koreans are producing nonstick cookware coated in crystals that make sense in 5D but not in 4D. Nobody really understands it, but the eggs slide off the pan.

  • Another Experiment (Score:4, Funny)

    by GlennC ( 96879 ) on Friday October 02, 2020 @08:00AM (#60564400)

    Now let's replace the Time Crystals with Folger's Crystals and see if they notice the difference!

  • found the link to their original paper:
    https://www.atomic-robo.com/at... [atomic-robo.com]

  • Finally we have the technological means to make blockchain AI a reality

  • This has been well covered as early as 1948 in "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline"
    See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Probably just the overuse of "time", or because I don't understand it.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • "collided two time crystals to see what happens next"

    - We don't know what these things are, how they work, or why they exist.
    - Have you tried smashing them together?
    - Great idea!

    I wonder how research will be done in the future -- you know, when it's done by people who didn't grow up smacking the shit out of their televisions to improve reception.

  • Introducing the hyper quantum firrometal drive

    The quantum flux of the hyristerin quadrophonicsuperparticle is modulated to the square root of the veeritorn field and divided into syrixion channels which are hyperaccelerated into a parallel mobius with double inverted phases and massaged with a tripple helix forntern field. This allows travel through space at any distance and to any place, which only takes a few milliseconds regardless.

    How could you NOT fund my research?

  • Are those crystals thiotimoline crystals? Because those would have endochronic properties.

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