Google researchers create 'time crystals' that could completely revolutionise computersThe revolutionary new material has a repeating pattern in time the way ordinary crystals have a repeating pattern in space – and it points the way to radical new technologies
Researchers from Google's quantum computing division say they have successfully created “time crystals,” a previously theoretical state of matter that could completely revolutionise computers.
Crystals, such as diamonds and snowflakes, or the ones you see in yoga teachers’ houses, are naturally-occurring objects that have a repeating pattern at the atomic level.
But those patterns repeat in space. If the Google researchers’ findings are correct, they have created objects with a constantly-repeating pattern in time.
Plenty of things have a repeating pattern in time – a watch face is an obvious example – but time crystals repeat without having to be wound up or plugged into a battery. They are essentially perpetual motion machines.
Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, with a quantum computer (Image: Google)
Perpetual motion is against the laws of physics, as we currently understand them, but the crystals synthesised using Google’s ultra-powerful Sycamore quantum computer don’t seem to be too bothered by the laws of physics.
Nobel prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek first theorised the existence of time crystals in 2012, but their rule-breaking properties earned him a lot of criticism in the science establishment: “I took a lot of grief,” he says.
Several research groups have been on the trail of the elusive formula for Time Crystals for several years.
Microsoft’s Station Q group have come close, and Norman Yao at the University of California, Berkeley, published a blueprint for making the repeating crystals in 2017. |
