Time crystals are not the kind of crystals you can hold in your hand. These are patterns repeating across time and space indefinitely, and for now, inexplicably. Scientists at the universities of Harvard and Maryland have produced the crystals in two different lab scenarios, making a reality out of a hypothetical concept.
It’s a discovery that is sure to make the 2004 Physics Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek smile – the crystals were his idea in 2012, and after he pitched it, researchers soon set to work proving his concept impossible. What made his proposal questionable was the implication of perpetual motion – that an object in its lowest energy state could still execute a repeated set of actions endlessly through time and space.
But others soon picked up the gauntlet. A Princeton University professor Shivaji Sondhi (who studied Physics at Delhi’s Hindu College) was curious as to what happens when you give particles at peace a repeated series of kicks. He predicted the outcome would be a new phase of matter. Along with Vedika Khemani, he published a theoretical basis for how time crystals could exist.
Another Indian-American scientist (and one of Wilczek’s former students), Chetan Nayak, took things from there, and predicted that the outcome would indeed be a time crystal. Norman Yao prepared the blueprints (among whose co-authors is Berkeley College theoretical physicist Ashvin Vishwanath). The recipe was ready.
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