Time Crystals Break The Continuity Of Time
In September 2016, a researcher’s team from the University of Maryland announced the experimentally confirmed the existence of time crystals. These crystals break the continuity of time. It became official in March 2017, time crystals are a new state of matter.
What is spatial symmetry ?
In physics, "spatial symmetry" refers to how an entity stays the same, no matter how one looks at it. If you were walking on a ball, the result would be the same every time you travel. This is because it has a continuous spatial symmetry. A cube, on the other hand, would have a slightly different appearance if it went from face to face, but it was identical on all sides. This means that it "breaks through" the continuous spatial symmetry and on the other hand has a discrete spatial symmetry.
Symmetry also applies to physical laws such as gravity (you would see an apple fall in the same way no matter how you see it) and above all, time. For example, the gears of a watch continuously move at a certain speed during rotation about a rotation axis, so that they have some sort of continuous temporal symmetry. Just as a crystal breaks the continuous spatial symmetry, a time crystal would break the continuous temporal symmetry: its "gears" rotate about an axis, but only at certain rotational speeds.
Scientists at the University of Maryland have succeeded in creating a time-crystal with very low temperatures, a magnetic field and lasers to capture a positively charged ion ring.
"When this combination is properly assembled, this ion ring will enter its lowest energy state, also called the ground state," says physicist Matt Lowry of Curiosity. "It turns out that this ionic-ring crystal actually goes into its ground state."
A system in its original state should not be able to move, but the time that crystals do so breaks the symmetry. Moving in a fundamental state means that the crystal could spin forever without heating or requiring extra energy, which the researchers consider a completely new "material phase or new phase of matter".
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