Scientists find new form of matter. Time crystals.

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Commander Data

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Wouldn't want to hear about the discovery of time crystals from anybody else.

finally!

It sounds exciting but we have to wait for peer review of the Maryland and Harvard methods of constructing the time crystals. Because they used different approaches and got the same results does sound promising but duplication of their efforts could take time.

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But it's one thing to predict these time crystals exist, it's another entirely to make them, which is where the new study comes in.

Yao and his team have now come up with a detailed blueprint that describes exactly how to make and measure the properties of a time crystal, and even predict what the various phases surrounding the time crystals should be - which means they've mapped out the equivalent of the solid, liquid, and gas phases for the new form of matter.

Published in Physical Review Letters, Yao calls the paper "the bridge between the theoretical idea and the experimental implementation".

And it's not just speculation, either. Based on Yao's blueprint, two independent teams - one from the University of Maryland and one from Harvard - have now followed the instructions to create their own time crystals.

Both of these developments were announced at the end of last year on the pre-print site arXiv.org (here and here), and have been submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals. Yao is a co-author on both articles.

While we're waiting for the papers to be published, we need to be skeptical about the two claims. But the fact that two separate teams have used the same blueprint to make time crystals out of vastly different systems is promising.

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I have no idea how any of that works but it sounds really interesting.

The first practical application will be in quantum computing. It's, hopefully, a breakthrough that will allow computers to compete with the brain's extraordinary ability to process information at great speed.

Yeah, malevolence and AI seem to go hand-in-hand in Sci-fi movies.

However, I personally think that, as we develop AI technology, we're going to find that we're merely duplicating functions of our brains, which are the ultimate quantum computers. Certainly, the human brain is capable of horrific decisions concerning the well-being of fellow humans but as we create AI we have the opportunity to avoid incorporating "hostile" characteristics of intelligence.

Isaac Asimov, the great sci-if writer, anticipated this and devised his famous Three Laws of Robotics:

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A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

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