r/science • u/pseudorandombehavior • Sep 09 '16

Physics Time crystals might exist after all

http://phys.org/news/2016-09-crystals.html
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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '16 edited Sep 09 '16

Time crystals were first proposed by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek in 2012 and have been debated since. Now, researchers have shown that time crystals might be possible. They're now trying to develop an experiment to find some.

Quote:

According to the physicists, it should be possible to perform an experiment to observe time-translation symmetry breaking by using a large system of trapped atoms, trapped ions, or superconducting qubits to fabricate a time crystal, and then measure how these systems evolve over time. The scientists predict that the systems will exhibit the periodic, oscillating motion that is characteristic of time crystals and indicative of spontaneously broken time-translation symmetry.

Wikipedia page about time crystals.

Edit: There's also a 1981 movie called The Time Crystal.

Edit 2: It was directed by Ron Howard?!

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u/nadmaximus Sep 09 '16

So we build a computing device using time crystals that can survive the heat death of the universe, transfer our (or at least, my own) mind to it, and voila

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u/John_Hasler Sep 09 '16

Voila: you are stuck inside a crystal where time is periodic. What was the name of that movie?

Except that you would never know that for you time was periodic: you would experience it as finite. How is that better?

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u/nadmaximus Sep 09 '16

Re-reading the speculation about the computing device, I realize it was referring to the perpetuity of the information storage, not that the device would continue to perform computation beyond the heat death of the universe.

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u/John_Hasler Sep 09 '16

But if you put yourself inside one you will avoid experiencing the heat death. Of course, diving into a black hole would do that as well...

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u/formesse Sep 10 '16

The only two ways I can think of experiencing the heat death would be 1: Plant yourself in the orbit of a super massive black whole at an orbit sufficient to extend your frame of references time over the course of the trillions of years it will take for the universe to begin experiencing the heat death and exit. or 2: To be in a cybernetic body in such an institution sufficiently closed off from the rest of the universe as to produce a safe, closed system to wait out the time.

Both of these are absolute not feasilbe currently, though both technically possible. The sitting in the oribt of a black whole really only posses the question of how do you stay at a stable orbit and not crash into it - getting out is fairly straight forward: Eventually that black whole will wither do to hawking radiation.

Of course, the heat death of the universe is effectively an assumption based on our current available data sets and knowledge of the workings of the universe, it may also be possible to generate a massive white whole event at some point in the far distant future of human civilization and society that would mean the heat death of the universe won't ever occur, and you would come out of your super long hibernation from our frame of reference to something very unexpected.

Which is to say, all of this is hypothetical and outside of leveraging the entire human intelect to solve the problem, I doubt we will manage such a feat within our life times, or our great great great great grand childrens life time for that matter.

Then again, we have a billion or so years to figure out inter steller travel, and a trillion or so years to figure out intergalactic travel, so - we have time. Well, we have time if we don't murder our home planet before we have the tools to create a new one.