FIONA MACDONALD (sciencealert.com), 28 JAN 2017/
Perpetual motion without energy.
For months now,
there's been speculation
that researchers might have finally created time crystals - strange
crystals that have an atomic structure that repeats not just in space,
but in time, putting them in perpetual motion without energy.
Now it's official - researchers have just reported in detail how to
make and measure these bizarre crystals. And two independent teams of
scientists claim they've actually created time crystals in the lab based
off this blueprint, confirming the existence of an entirely new form of
matter.
The discovery might sound pretty abstract, but it heralds in a whole
new era in physics - for decades we've been studying matter that's
defined as being 'in equilibrium', such as metals and insulators.
But it's been predicted that there are many more strange types of
matter out there in the Universe that aren't in equilibrium that we
haven't even begun to look into, including time crystals. And now we
know they're real.
The fact that we now have the first example of non-equilibrium matter
could lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of the world around
us, as well as new technology such as quantum computing.
"This is a new phase of matter, period, but it is also really cool
because it is one of the first examples of non-equilibrium matter," said lead researcher Norman Yao from the University of California, Berkeley...
Full text: http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-just-announced-a-brand-new-form-of-matter-time-crystals?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1
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Original papers: in Physical Review Letters, Harvard time crystal paper and the University of Maryland paper.
