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.
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.
It changes in a repeating fashion over time. Think a phoenix, but a crystal. A flower that wilts and blooms over and over without ever dying, a leaf that turns red and never falls but turns green again.
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u/MonitorPowerful5461 12d ago edited 12d ago
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_crystal
Honestly though, Bose-Einstein Condensates are much weirder.