Physicists Link Two Time Crystals In Seemingly Impossible Experiment (livescience.com) 52
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Live Science: Physicists have created a system of two connected time crystals, which are strange quantum systems that are stuck in an endless loop to which the normal laws of thermodynamics do not apply. By connecting two time crystals together, the physicists hope to use the technology to eventually build a new kind of quantum computer. "It is a rare privilege to explore a completely novel phase of matter," Samuli Autti, the lead scientist on the project from Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, told Live Science in an email. [...]
In the new study, Autti and his team used "magnons" to build their time crystal. Magnons are "quasiparticles," which emerge in the collective state of a group of atoms. In this case, the team of physicists took helium-3 -- a helium atom with two protons but only one neutron -- and cooled it to within a ten-thousandth of a degree above absolute zero. At that temperature, the helium-3 transformed into a Bose-Einstein condensate, where all the atoms share a common quantum state and work in concert with each other. In that condensate, all the spins of the electrons in the helium-3 linked up and worked together, generating waves of magnetic energy, the magnons. These waves sloshed back and forth forever, making them a time crystal. Autti's team took two groups of magnons, each one operating as its own time crystal, and brought them close enough to influence each other. The combined system of magnons acted as one time crystal with two different states.
Autti's team hopes that their experiments can clarify the relationship between quantum and classical physics. Their goal is to build time crystals that interact with their environments without the quantum states disintegrating, allowing the time crystal to keep running while it is used for something else. It wouldn't mean free energy -- the motion associated with a time crystal doesn't have kinetic energy in the usual sense, but it could be used for quantum computing. Having two states is important, because that is the basis for computation. In classical computer systems, the basic unit of information is a bit, which can take either a 0 or 1 state, while in quantum computing, each "qubit" can be in more than one place at the same time, allowing for much more computing power. The research has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
In the new study, Autti and his team used "magnons" to build their time crystal. Magnons are "quasiparticles," which emerge in the collective state of a group of atoms. In this case, the team of physicists took helium-3 -- a helium atom with two protons but only one neutron -- and cooled it to within a ten-thousandth of a degree above absolute zero. At that temperature, the helium-3 transformed into a Bose-Einstein condensate, where all the atoms share a common quantum state and work in concert with each other. In that condensate, all the spins of the electrons in the helium-3 linked up and worked together, generating waves of magnetic energy, the magnons. These waves sloshed back and forth forever, making them a time crystal. Autti's team took two groups of magnons, each one operating as its own time crystal, and brought them close enough to influence each other. The combined system of magnons acted as one time crystal with two different states.
Autti's team hopes that their experiments can clarify the relationship between quantum and classical physics. Their goal is to build time crystals that interact with their environments without the quantum states disintegrating, allowing the time crystal to keep running while it is used for something else. It wouldn't mean free energy -- the motion associated with a time crystal doesn't have kinetic energy in the usual sense, but it could be used for quantum computing. Having two states is important, because that is the basis for computation. In classical computer systems, the basic unit of information is a bit, which can take either a 0 or 1 state, while in quantum computing, each "qubit" can be in more than one place at the same time, allowing for much more computing power. The research has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
Careful... (Score:5, Informative)
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Time Cube [archive.org]
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The concept would have been cool to be a pseudo-fan of, if it didn't descend into racist bullshit. He could have made a ton of money selling shirts, meme paraphernalia, and things like that, but it was ruined by the racist aspects.
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The science, interesting futurism, confused ranting, and racism blended together has a sort of Terry Davis vibe to it.
Re:Careful... (Score:5, Insightful)
the world is not ready for 4 CORNER SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY EARTH ROTATION
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If you link two time cubes, you get a 8 CORNER SIMULTANEOUS 8-DAY EARTH ROTATION
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I totally remember when that dude gave a lecture at MIT .. it was all serious too.
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"Nef kind" of quantum computer? WTF? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe build an old kind first, i.e. one that actually works and not just fakes it...
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They *have* built quantum computers. They just aren't very practical yet. For much of anything. This, needing to be kept at a fraction of a degree Kelvin, doesn't sound any more practical than the others.
But theoretically it's interesting.
COVID-19 related brain damage (Score:2, Insightful)
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"We watched the machine from the outside for ten minutes, but it soon got so boring that it felt like forever."
Then they went to have a beer and write a paper.
It gets much worse... (Score:2)
The laws of physics are symmetric through space. That means that the fundamental equations of gravity or electromagnetism or quantum mechanics apply equally throughout the entirety of the volume of the universe....But in a crystal, this gorgeous symmetry gets broken.
No it does not, not even a little. This symmetry is what gives rise to conservation of momentum. It's fundamentally built into Relativity. Breaking this symmetry this would break relativity and nobody is claiming that. If I displace a crystal through space the physics governing it is _exactly_ the same no matter where I place it.
In 2012, physicist Frank Wilczek, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, noticed that the laws of physics also have a time symmetry. That means any experiment repeated at a later time should produce the same result.
No, he did not - this is something we have known for decades if not a century or more. You learn in undergrad physics when you show using Lagrangian mechanics and Noe
It just shows... (Score:1)
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"Most of the physicists have always thought we understand most of physics."
You have evidence to back this claim up?
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Most of the physicists have always thought we understand most of physics. They're always wrong.
You can't claim that as a fact.
The can't even see the list of unanswered questions, much less understand its magnitude.
They're more qualified than you are in the matter.
There are entire undiscovered fields and new physics to describe them.
Objection. Speculation.
Now, you might be right. Hell, you're maybe even probably right.
But there is and end.
There is every probability that we've pretty much figured out the base rules of the universe, and everything else is tweaking or filling in blanks. Claiming that we have not is as laughably naive as claiming that we have.
Really, you should be posting stuff at billmcgonigle.com instead.
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They're always wrong.
You can't claim that as a fact.
It's held true so far. I have no reason to believe that will change.
But there is and end.
Don't be so sure. Remember that science doesn't deal in truth. It wouldn't work if it did. The best it can possibly produce is a model that fits with what we observe. For there to be and end, however, we'd need to know that we've reached it. That isn't something science is equipped to tell us.
There is every probability that we've pretty much figured out the base rules of the universe, and everything else is tweaking or filling in blanks.
This is obviously false. We're still working on the "base rules." Physics has some serious problems right now. For example, the standard model
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It's held true so far. I have no reason to believe that will change.
Incorrect.
That's as nonsensical as saying, "There's always a bigger fish" has held true, before that bigger fish has appeared.
Don't be so sure. Remember that science doesn't deal in truth. It wouldn't work if it did. The best it can possibly produce is a model that fits with what we observe. For there to be and end, however, we'd need to know that we've reached it. That isn't something science is equipped to tell us.
Patently false.
Science passed what we can observe a long, long time ago.
Experimental science hasn't even come close to catching up with theories that were derived over 100 years ago.
This is obviously false. We're still working on the "base rules." Physics has some serious problems right now. For example, the standard model is very broken, failing to adequately explain things like gravity. Oh, and it's also incompatible with general relativity, which is a pretty significant problem. (I am not a physicist, but I did study physics as a grad student at Rice, so I'm not completely in the dark here.)
The standard model is not "very broken".
The standard model does not try to explain gravity, and complaining about it's inability to do so is like complaining that trigonometry is unable to explain the
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That's as nonsensical as saying
No, that's induction. You know, the foundation upon which science is built.
Science passed what we can observe a long, long time ago.
LOL! Do you think we do science by divine revelation or something? Get real.
Okay, we're done here. I'm clearly wasting my time with you.
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No, that's induction. You know, the foundation upon which science is built.
No, it is not. You are wrong.
LOL! Do you think we do science by divine revelation or something? Get real.
There is no we here. Your ignorance stinks up this entire thread.
The human mind is capable of deduction. How, of course, do you think time crystals, the subject of this story, were hypothesized years before they were ever observed.
Okay, we're done here. I'm clearly wasting my time with you.
Oh, I agree. Your boss would like you to clean out that fryer now, I think.
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Actually, just about all physicists will admit that the current models are wrong. The problem is they work everywhere that we can test them. But we've got two models, dealing with different areas (relativity and quantum physics) and they make different predictions for things we can't test or look at. So SOMETHING is wrong.
But at the level at which we're actually working, the theories work out correctly. (Except for that annoying "dark energy" and "dark matter", where "dark" means "We don't know what thi
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Actually, just about all physicists will admit that the current models are wrong.
Of course current models are wrong.
But our fundamental understanding has shown to be pretty spot on. There hasn't been a paradigm shift in over 100 years.
My statement perfectly accounted for "models being wrong".
But we've got two models, dealing with different areas (relativity and quantum physics) and they make different predictions for things we can't test or look at. So SOMETHING is wrong.
The problem is not that they make different predictions. The problem is that they are fundamentally incompatible with each other.
That is not as problematic as it may seem to the uninitiated, which is why it doesn't cause us any problems.
It may very well be that quantum mechanics simply does not
Re:It just shows... (Score:5, Interesting)
BECs are not new. Being able to play with them is.
Bringing collections of particles to the ground state and being able to play with macro quantum effects is neat, but none of it is new physics.
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I suspect, though, that the math to predict how they would interact may be too fearsome for anyone tow work through. Much of the details of quantum math is "well, we can't calculate this exactly, so we'll make some simplifying assumptions and hope that it predicts the right answer". Amazingly often it does, but it's not exactly a mathematical certainty. (Check out renormalization.)
Wrong idea (Score:3)
Stuff the quantum computer nonsense.
What I want to know is, having synchronised the two crystals, can they then be separated and used as a communications medium?
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Pretty sure the answer is "no", but I'm also pretty sure that they system isn't stable enough for that to convey more than 1 bit of information. When they say "forever" they probably mean "it was stable for several seconds", which is pretty close to forever for a quantum system. I don't think this "time crystal" has the same kind of forces holding it stable that an ordinary crystal does. Not even approximately the same magnitude. (That they need to keep it a fraction of a degree Kelvin is a pretty good
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Diana Cowen, who's a well-known physics youtuber, posted a video describing what they in a bit more detail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Basically by "forever" they mean as long as the laser was shining at the atoms. However the truly weird aspect is that the laser was that the resonating condensate was not absorbing any of the laser's energy. Quantum physics is truly weird.
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Make that Dianna Cowern. Personally I'm waiting for Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder to make a video on the topic. She's good at cutting through the hype and explaining what is really going on and whether it matters all that much. She's become quite a critic of how science is communicated these days. Partly that's the fault of the media, and partly the fault of scientists.
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Quantum entanglement cannot be used to transfer information. (which makes me wonder about how real that "spooky action at a distance" really is)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Entangle them (Score:2)
Next step is to entangle them then move the half somewhere else.
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They try to make entanglement sound like you can influence one by changing the other - as far as I have seen in entanglement articles - it does not work that way.
Didn't we learn from Happy death day and HDD2? (Score:2)
These kinds of experiments will cause Groundhog Day time loops.
Time crystals (Score:2)
Anytime anything claims to break the laws... (Score:4, Insightful)
of thermodynamics I am so incredibly sceptical as to immediately call bullshit.
Not impossible as things are proven and disproven all the time, but the first and second laws have proven to be pretty robust up until this point and preclude any kind of perpetual motion machine. I'd suggest this is also true at a quantum level (but lets face it, the quantum physics can be pretty whacky at times).
Interesting but I'd be very sceptical of claims that the laws of thermodynamics don't apply when they apply to everything else we've looked at.
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Don't be too skeptical. Time crystals have been found, and the assumptions of thermodynamics don't apply to them. But they're also quite small, and with all the pieces in particular quantum states. I *believe* that they're also quite sensitive to external noise.
Thermodynamics ASSUMES that there's a random distribution of quantum states. (Well, that's a little of an overstatement, but that's the basic idea.) When you don't have that, thermodynamics doesn't apply.
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Time crystals have been found, and the assumptions of thermodynamics don't apply to them. But they're also quite small, and with all the pieces in particular quantum states. I *believe* that they're also quite sensitive to external noise.
If so, then perhaps that can be where the energy is coming from to run them.
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IIUC they don't require any external energy source. They also don't emit any external energy. It's a transition between a regular series of states that are all at the same energy. (That said, this example required illumination by a laser, so...)
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IIUC they don't require any external energy source. They also don't emit any external energy. It's a transition between a regular series of states that are all at the same energy.
With 100% efficiency, while transmitting information to the outside of the system? I don't think so.
(That said, this example required illumination by a laser, so...)
Yeah. And in every other case you will find an external source of energy, too.
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Ignore things written by confused journalists who don't understand the subjects they're writing about. Put a quantum system into a stationary state and it stays there (as long as you can keep it isolated). Nothing here breaks the laws of thermodynamics. If it spontaneously transitioned to a state of lower entropy, that would be a problem. But it doesn't. It just stays in the same state. Thermodynamics is fine with that.
Computing without energy (Score:1)
Sounds cool, but.... (Score:2)
Unless the energy you could extract from the waves of magnetic energy created here was somehow greater than the energy required to just maintain the condensate's temperature to stay in that state in the first place, I fail to see how this is that big of a deal.
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Quantum oscillator? (Score:2)
Reminds me of Invisible boy (Score:1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It only works when noone is watching.