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Just ten years ago, scientists discovered a bizarre new state of matter in which atoms organize themselves in a repeating pattern, similar to what you would find in a metallic crystal or a rock.
But rather than just being arranged in a pattern in space, these atoms were also in constant motion over time. And that’s how they got their fantastic name: “Crystals of Time”.
The unusual phenomenon has only been observed a few times since the crystals of time were first synthesized – but now an international team of researchers have achieved the next breakthrough: They have observed two crystals of time interacting with each other. ‘other.
“Controlling the interaction of two crystals of time is a major achievement,” Samuli Autti of Lancaster University, lead author of a paper on the work published in the journal Materials from nature, said in a statement. “Before that, no one had observed two time crystals in the same system, let alone seen them interact.”
This means we could be a bit closer to taking advantage of time crystals, possibly in atomic clocks. Atomic clocks measure time much more accurately than a standard clock using tiny changes in frequencies and were used in the creation of GPS.
The team also suggests that their experience proves that time crystals “obey the general dynamics of quantum mechanics” and that further study should be investigated whether they could be applied in the field of quantum information processing.
To make their observation, the team observed a rare isotope of helium called Helium-3, which has a missing neutron, within a ten-thousandth of a degree from absolute zero (-273.15 degrees Celsius). At these cold temperatures, helium forms a “superfluid,” behaving like a liquid without viscosity.
In this state, the researchers created two time crystals and allowed them to touch each other. For the first time, they observed particles moving back and forth from crystal to crystal. In physics, this is called the “Josephson effect” – when a current flows continuously without any voltage being applied, typically seen with two or more superconductors.
READ MORE: First observation of the interaction of the “ crystals of time ” [Lancaster University]
More on Time Crystals: Physicists created the first crystals of time
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