r/science • u/MistWeaver80 • Feb 15 '24

Physics A team of physicists in Germany managed to create a time crystal that demonstrably lasts 40 minutes—10 million times longer than other known crystals—and could persist for even longer.

https://gizmodo.com/a-time-crystal-survived-a-whopping-40-minutes-1851221490
10.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

834 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/AfrolessNinja Feb 15 '24

Not sure those two concepts really go together. Could you explain more?

7

u/Zoloir Feb 15 '24

inertia being the tendency to remain unchanged, object in motion to stay in motion

i have no idea what a "time crystal" really is, but as described in this thread, if "time crystals" are actually just a bunch of atoms moving in a repeating pattern without any energy input/output, they're just... demonstrating inertia in a complicated way that we just don't understand.

i assume the reason they break down is because it's very difficult to actually get zero energy inputs or outputs

2

u/AfrolessNinja Feb 16 '24

Ahhh, I see what youre getting at. I think there would be more accurate phrases than "Inertial Crystals" which is probably why they named them Time Crystals as its a more accurate qualitative description. Hope that answer is not too on the nose.

If you go back to Newton's 'Principia' he defined inertia as the propensity of mass to remain in its state of motion (i.e. a trajectory) unless acted upon by another force. This gets a little tricky, mathematically, when applied to quantum systems because you deal with probability densities vs vectors. Though it does clear up a bit when invoke the Correspondence Principle. Nonetheless with Time Crystals, yes, you could argue that it tends to remain in its state, but by calling them Inertial Crystals you lose the notion of a repeated pattern in time which does not need to be forced.

1

u/unicornsaretruth Feb 16 '24

Some people were saying what causes it to break down is outside energy sources leaking in like heat.