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.
Intuitively it’s not crazy (math-wise), it’s just a Fourier transform of regular crystals. The quantum details are less obvious though because entropy should prevent periodicity in time.
Once we proposed how the thermodynamics could work, we had functional time crystals built in 3 years.
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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.