Not even a decade ago, scientists discovered a bizarre new state of matter in which atoms arranged themselves in a repeating pattern, similar to what you would find in a crystal metal or rock.
But instead of being arranged only in space in a pattern, these atoms were also in constant motion over time. And that’s how they got their fantastic name: “time crystals.”
The unusual phenomenon has only been observed a handful of times since synthesizing time crystals for the first time – but now an international team of researchers has achieved the following breakthrough: they have observed two time crystals interacting with each other.
“Monitoring the interaction of double crystals is a major achievement,” said Samuli Autti of Lancaster University, lead author of an article on the work published in the journal Natural materials, said in a statement. “Before anyone had observed two time crystals in the same system, let them interact.”
This means we can be one step closer to actually taking advantage of time crystals, probably within atomic clocks. Atomic clocks measure time much more accurately than a standard clock with minuscule changes in frequencies, and are used in making GPS.
The team also suggests that their experiment proves that time crystals “follow the general dynamics of quantum mechanics” and that it needs to be further investigated whether they can be applied in the field of processing quantum information.
To make their observation, the team observed a rare helium isotope called Helium-3, which has one missing neutron, within one tenth of a degree of absolute zero (-273.15 degrees Celsius). At these cold temperatures, helium forms an ‘abundance’, behaving like a liquid with zero viscosity.
In this state, the researchers made two time crystals and let them touch each other. For the first time, they saw particles flowing back and forth from one crystal to another. In physics, this is known as the “Josephson effect” – when a current flows without interruption without applying voltage, it is normally seen with two or more superconductors.
READ MORE: First ever observation of ‘time crystals’ interaction [Lancaster University]
More on time crystals: Physicists made the crystals of the first time
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