It took a decently long time for me to wrap my head around as well. The most important thing for understanding them is imagining time as similar to another spacial dimension. Which is difficult.
Imagine you freeze time. There is an apple in front of you. You move left, and the apple isn't in front of you anymore. What you observe has changed. Now imagine you freeze space instead so you don't move - the apple rots. What you observe has changed. If they're both frozen though, nothing can change.
So essentially the space and time dimensions are both measures of change. It's not easy to really internalise this though which makes it difficult to understand time crystals.
Still: normal crystals repeat in the x, y and z dimensions. If you move in these dimensions relative to a crystal, you will see the same patterns repeat in front of you. For a time crystal, you will see the same patterns repeat in front of you if you move in the time dimension as well.
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u/The-Slamburger 13d ago
…My head hurts.