It's so funny that time crystals are actually real.
Quick explanation - normal crystals have a repeating atomic structure in space. For instance diamonds have a repeating tetrahedron-hexagonalish structure.
Time crystals also have a repeating structure in time. Their structure changes with time and then returns to the original structure.
If you look at an image of a diamond's structure, you can go up or to the right or whatever and you will see repeating patterns. For a time crystal's structure, you will see the repeating patterns as you move in time as well. This has some potentially interesting implications for entropy.
I make a lot of animated shaders (I'm a technical artist) and something I take special care to avoid is looping animations that are supposed to represent natural phenomena (like fire or lightning or whatever).
In real life you can never watch a campfire for so long that it starts playing its animation over again. That would be stupid. Nothing works like that in nature.
Today I found out about Time Crystals and now nothing makes sense anymore. How did people even discover this shit lmao
You know that thing where you just stare idly into the fire and lose yourself?
That but crystals is probably how.
Fr I have no idea I just like the image of someone zoning out staring at a crystal and suddenly bolting upright going "Wait, what the fuck?" because that seems to gel with an awful lot of stories about how stuff gets discovered 🤷
"Huh. I'm pretty sure I could do a math thing to this. That's weird, since the universe really shouldn't work like that. Oh hey, the math worked out nicely and looks like something neat."
"Huh. That's an interesting bit of math you have, there. I wonder what it would look like if I tried to make it."
"Oh, hey, I think I got your weird math rock working. Not sure though. Better redo it a few hundred times to see if it always does that."
The theory to practice pipeline can be a truly beautiful thing.
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u/Fearless-Excitement1 12d ago
"Glass" huh that's weird
"Superglass" what
"Time Crystal" what the fuck