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How Time Crystals Are Challenging the Laws of Physics · The Last Observer: Science and Beyond

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So close your eyes for a second and just picture
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: a clock, you know, sitting on a desk.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm picturing it like a standard mechanical clock.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Right exactly, and you can hear that rhythmic mechanical sound. Right.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: But and here's the hook. You open the back casing
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: of this clock. Huh. There is no battery in there,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: there's no winding spring, there's definitely no hidden power cable
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: feeding it electricity.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Right, It's completely isolated.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Completely isolated from literally every energy source in the universe.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Yet the gears are turning. It's ticking perfectly, and not
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: just for an hour or a day, but like literally forever.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Which is I mean, it completely defies how human intuition works,
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: and for that matter, how classical physics tells us the
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: physical world operates.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: It really does. I mean it feels like an illusion, right,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: or maybe one of those theoretical thought experiments designed to
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: just torture physics grad students.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, the classic impossible scenario.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: But the wild thing is, this isn't a thought experiment
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: anymore at all. We're actually looking at a fundamentally newly
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: discovered reality today.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: We really are.
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  Speaker 1: We're talking about a completely new phase of matter known
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: as a time crystal, A time crystal. Yeah, and in
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: this deep dive, we are basically going to tear down
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: all the assumptions we've held about how the universe is structured,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: how matter behaves at its core. And you know what
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: this actually means for the physical architecture of our future tech.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: It's a huge shift. I mean, to really understand the
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: magnitude of what a time crystal is, we have to
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: go straight to the bedrock of modern physics, right we
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: have to completely reevaluate what a phase of matter actually
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: implies in the first place.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Let's start right there, actually, because just the classification alone
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: a new phase of matter. For anyone who casually follows
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: science or just remembers grade school, when we hear phase,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: we tend to think of the transition points of a single.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Substance, right, Yeah, like water exactly.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, water freeze into ice, boils into steam solid liquid gas.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: But I mean, this isn't just some quirky, exotic state
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: of a super cooled liquid or something.
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  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
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  Speaker 1: This is something as fundamental as discovering a completely new
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know, a completely new axis on a graph,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: like a new primary color.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: That's a really good way to put it. Because a
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: phase of matter is fundamentally about symmetry. It's about symmetry
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: and organization.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, organization.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, It actually has very little to do with whether
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: something feels hard to the touch or wet or whatever.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: It's about how the foundational building blocks, the atoms, the molecules,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: the ions, how they are constrained by the rules of
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: their environment. Right, So when a material shifts from a
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: liquid to a solid, it's actually undergoing this process called
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: symmetry breaking.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Symmetry breaking. Okay, break that down for me.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Sure, So think about water in a liquid state, the
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: water molecules can move anywhere, the environment looks basically the
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: same in every direction. That's a high degree of spatial symmetry.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Right, Because if I'm like swimming in a pool, the
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: water feels uniform whether I move left, right, up or down,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: it's all just water, exactly.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: But when that water freezes into ice, those molecules lock
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: into place. They form a rigid crystalline lattice, so that
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: continuous spatial symmetry is broken.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, because it's not uniform everywhere anymore.
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  Speaker 2: Right, You can't just move continuously in any direction and
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: see the exact same thing anymore. You have to move
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: in these discrete specific jumps from one molecule to the
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: next to see the pattern repeat. I see, and that restriction,
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  Speaker 2: that specific breaking of spatial symmetry is what literally defines
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: a spatial crystal. The atoms are organizing existence based on
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: a repeating pattern in physical space.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, So just to make sure I have this straight. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: For hundreds of years, every single phase of matter we
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: have ever cataloged in a textbook, from plasmas to those
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: weird bosin Stein condensates to just irregular old metals, they
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: have all been defined by how their atoms organize themselves spatially, Yes, up, down, left, right,
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  Speaker 1: in physical space.
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  Speaker 2: Every single one of them. Until twenty twelve, Enter Frank
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: willcheck exactly. Frank willcheck. A Nobel laureate. He was basically
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  Speaker 2: just teaching a class on regular spatial crystals, and he
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  Speaker 2: started wondering about the underlying mathematics of these.
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  Speaker 1: Structures, as Nobel laureates do.
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  Speaker 2: Right, just casual musings. But he remembered that relativity teaches
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: us that space and time are inextricably linked. Right, they
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: form a single fabric space.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Time, space, time.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so willcheck posts this very simple but actually radically
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  Speaker 2: dangerous question, which was he asked, if a lattice of
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  Speaker 2: atoms can break symmetry and form a repeating pattern in space,
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  Speaker 2: why couldn't a lattice of atoms break symmetry and form
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  Speaker 2: a repeating pattern in time?
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  Speaker 1: Wow? Okay, And just like that, the time crystal was hypothesized. Exactly,
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  Speaker 1: a structure that organizes itself, not across the physical dimensions
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  Speaker 1: of the room it's sitting in, but across the dimension
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  Speaker 1: of the seconds taking by on the clock.
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  Speaker 2: That's it. But when Wilchick published his theory, I mean,
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  Speaker 2: the physics community's initial response was fierce pushback.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Oh I bet it sounds crazy. It did.
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  Speaker 2: By twenty fifteen, this physicist named Patrick Bruno even published
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: a rigorous mathematical proof, seemingly demonstrating that time crystals were
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  Speaker 2: flat out impossible in a system at thermal equilibrium.
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  Speaker 1: He basically tried to kill the theory.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it looked like the idea was completely dead in
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  Speaker 2: the water.
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  Speaker 1: Because it just sounded too much like a paradox, right,
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  Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about somebody repeating in time rather
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  Speaker 1: than space. Let's actually look at the mechanics of that
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  Speaker 1: for a second.
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  Speaker 2: Sure, let's do it.
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  Speaker 1: Because if I have a normal spatial crystal like a diamond,
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  Speaker 1: I can put it under an electron microscope and I
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: look at it and I see a carbon atom. Right.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Then I pan the microscope a few nanometers to the
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  Speaker 1: right and boom, I see another carbon atom. Pan again
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: another one. The pattern repeats across physical distance.
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  Speaker 2: That's a regular crystal lattice.
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  Speaker 1: So how do we translate that lattice idea to the
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: dimension of time? Like, is it like a heartbeat?
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's use your diamond under the microscope analogy. But
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  Speaker 2: instead of moving the lens to the left or the right,
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: you lock the microscope in place. You don't move it
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  Speaker 2: at all.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, microscope is locked.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: You focus on a single cluster of atoms and you
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: just wait. At second one, you observe the atoms in
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  Speaker 2: a specific physical configuration. Let's call it state A.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: State A.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and let's say in state A, their quantum spins
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: are all pointing.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Up and just for you listening. Quantum spin is basically
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  Speaker 1: the intrinsic angular momentum of the particle, which essentially makes
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: them act like tiny bar magnets.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: Right correct, Yes, so at second one the magnets are
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  Speaker 2: pointing up. Now at second two, without you doing anything
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  Speaker 2: at all to extract or add energy to the system,
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  Speaker 2: the magnets flip.
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  Speaker 1: They flip on their own.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, they flip to point down. We'll call that state B.
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  Speaker 2: Then at second three they flip back to state A,
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  Speaker 2: pointing up again.
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  Speaker 1: Oh wow.
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  Speaker 2: This oscillation continues on a rigid, unbreakable rhythm. The atomic
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  Speaker 2: structure is performing the synchronized dance, this relentless flip flopping
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  Speaker 2: pattern as time naturally ticks forward.
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  Speaker 1: The pattern isn't the physical spacing. The pattern is the
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: passage of time itself exactly.
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  Speaker 2: The lattice isn't made of carbon atoms spaced and nanometer
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  Speaker 2: apart in space. The lattice is made of states changing
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  Speaker 2: a second apart in time.
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  Speaker 1: That is mind bending.
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  Speaker 2: A regular crystal spatial lattice dictates where an atom will
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  Speaker 2: be located, but a time crystal's temporal lattice dictates when
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  Speaker 2: an atom will change its state.
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  Speaker 1: But wait, if the atomic spins are constantly flipping from
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  Speaker 1: up to down, state eight to state B and back again,
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  Speaker 1: it's fundamentally in action, right, it's movement. It is movement, Yes,
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  Speaker 1: and this has to be where we'll check ran into
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: that wall of criticism and why Patrick Bruno wrote that
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  Speaker 1: mathematical proof because in our universe, as far as I
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  Speaker 1: understand it, movement always requires an energy exchange.
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  Speaker 2: Always. It is the most stubborn inescapable law of physics.
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  Speaker 2: Thermodynamics dictates that if something is moving, if something is
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  Speaker 2: fundamentally changing states, it is either consuming energy or dissipating
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  Speaker 2: energy in the form of heat.
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  Speaker 1: Right, Like, if I roll a marble across a hardwood floor,
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  Speaker 1: it's pushing air out of the way, it's rubbing against
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  Speaker 1: the wood grain. Friction steals its kinetic energy, turns it
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  Speaker 1: into heat, and eventually the marble stops. Exactly, even in
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  Speaker 1: a vacuum, if a machine is moving, it's doing work.
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  Speaker 1: So a structure that just oscillates back and forth forever
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  Speaker 1: that sounds dangerously close to a perpetual motion machine.
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  Speaker 2: Which are fundamentally impossible.
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  Speaker 1: Right We've all been told that since high school.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, but a perpetual motion machine implies a system that
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: can do continuous work like generate output without any energy input. Time.
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  Speaker 1: Crystals do not do that, Okay, So how do they
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  Speaker 1: pull off this stable motion without extra energy.
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  Speaker 2: Then to understand how they achieve it, we have to
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  Speaker 2: look at the concept of the ground state.
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  Speaker 1: The ground state, which is the absolute lowest energy state
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  Speaker 1: a quantum mechanical system can achieve.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. Think of your marble again, but this time it's
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: resting perfectly still at the very bottom of a perfectly
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  Speaker 2: smooth curved bowl. Okay, it has zero kinetic energy because
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: it's not moving, and it has expended all its potential
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  Speaker 2: energy just getting to the bottom. It literally cannot roll
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  Speaker 2: up the sides of the bowl without an external push.
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  Speaker 2: It is frozen.
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  Speaker 1: That makes sense, right.
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  Speaker 2: In classical mechanics, the ground state always equals perfect static
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  Speaker 2: stillness always. But and here's the paradigm shift. A time
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  Speaker 2: crystal is a quantum mini body system whose fundamental ground
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  Speaker 2: state actually includes this endless oscillation.
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  Speaker 1: Wait. Wait, so it is moving, but it is already
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  Speaker 1: at the bottom of the bowl. Yes, it literally cannot
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  Speaker 1: give up any energy to friction or heat because it
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  Speaker 1: has no spare energy left to give.
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  Speaker 2: Precisely, it cannot dissipate heat because it is already at
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: its absolute minimum energy threshold.
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  Speaker 1: That is, I mean, that's just crazy to wrap your
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: head around.
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  Speaker 2: It is, and it's why you can't hook a microscopic
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: turbine up to a time crystal to generate free electricity.
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  Speaker 2: The moment you try to extract energy from it, you
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: perturb it, you collapse the system.
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  Speaker 1: Ah, So no infinite free energy to power the world.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: No, Sadly, it is a close loop of dynamic movement
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: that requires zero input and yields zero output. It just pulses.
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  Speaker 1: To visualize this for everyone listening, imagine a perfectly spinning
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: top on a completely frictionless surface, right in a total vacuum.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: But instead of just a smooth, uniform spin, the top
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: is structurally morphing, right.
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  Speaker 2: It's changing, spanning and.
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  Speaker 1: Contracting, ticking back and forth like a metronome forever. And
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: it does this completely for free.
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  Speaker 2: It does, and that free motion is what forces us
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: to confront Emyinther's theorem, which is honestly arguably one of
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: the most beautiful and terrifying mathematical frameworks in all of
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: theoretical physics.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, Nether's theorem, I love this part. This basically connects
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: symmetry to conservation laws. Right. It's the mathematical rule book
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: that tells the universe exactly how to balance its checkbook.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy. So back in nineteen fifteen, Emmy
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Nator proved mathematically that every continuous symmetry in nature corresponds
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: directly to a fun conservation law.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, give me an example of that.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Sure, So if physical laws are the same regardless of
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: where you are in space, meaning space is symmetric, that
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: directly mathematically results in the conservation of momentum.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Because the universe doesn't care if a billiard ball collusion
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: happens in Tokyo or on the moon. Yeah, right, the
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: physics are the same, so the momentum before and after
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: the collision.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Has to be equal, exactly and more profoundly for our
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: discussion not there also proved that if the laws of
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: physics are symmetric over time, that directly results in the
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: conservation of energy.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Time symmetry equals conservation of energy.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Right. Time translation symmetry means an object at rest today
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: will behave exactly the same way if you look at
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: it tomorrow, assuming no energy is added or removed.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: A rock is a rock on Tuesday. It is still
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: a rock on Wednesday.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Exactly because the rock exists in a state of continuous
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: time translation symmetry, its fundamental resting properties do not change
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: as time flows continuously forward. But now apply this logic
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: to the time crystal. Time crystal, at rest in its
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: ground state with absolutely no external energy acting upon it,
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  Speaker 2: spontaneously decides to be in state A at second one
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  Speaker 2: and state B at second two.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, it broke time translation symmetry.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: It broke it. It decided to look fundamentally different depending
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: on when you look at it.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: But wait a minute. If no, there's Kivitu's theorem says
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: that time symmetry is what guarantees the conservation of energy,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: and a time crystal inherently breaks time symmetry. Does that
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: mean a time crystal violates the conservation of energy?
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: And that is the billion dollar question.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Because if energy isn't conserved, the entire discipline of physics
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: collapses overnight.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: That is the exact paradox that made theorists think Willchick
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: was wrong in the first place, and it's exactly why
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: we have to draw a hard line between continuous time
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: translation symmetry and discrete time translation symmetry.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, break that down for me. What's the difference between
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: continuous and discrete in this context.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Imagine dragging your finger continuously across a smooth, unbroken pane.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Of c glofe okay, feeling smooth glass.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: That is continuous symmetry. Every single point feels exactly the
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: same as you drag your finger. Now, instead of glass,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: imagine running your finger over a picket fence.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: You feel would that empty gap? Would then empty gap?
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, that is discrete symmetry. It only repeats its specific
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: set intervals.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Ah. So theorists realized a time crystal couldn't exist as
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: a continuous system because that would violate energy conservation entirely.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Right. It would heat up and basically destroy itself in
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: an instant, which is what Patrick Bruno's proof mathematically demonstrated.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: He was right about continuous systems, but there was a loophole,
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: a massive loophole. In twenty fifteen, theoretical physicists like Norman
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Yao at Berkeley and a few others they realized something.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: They asked, what if the time crystal wasn't a closed
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: continuous system. What if it was a driven quantum system?
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: A driven system meaning a system subjected to a periodic
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: pulsing energy input.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, these are known as fucase systems.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Wait, hold on, if you're pulsing it with energy from
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: the outside, how is that a time crystal doesn't. A
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: time crystal rely on being in its ground state, completely
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: stable without absorbing energy.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: And this is the utter genius of the loophole. The
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: scientists propose using a laser to pulse a chain of ions.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: The laser provides a rhythmic external drive, basically like someone
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: pushing a child on a playground.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Swing, push, push, push. Right.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: But here is where the bizarre quantum magic comes in.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Because of a specific phenomenon called many body localization or MBL,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: the atoms in the crystal fundamentally refuse to absorb the
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: energy from the laser.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Many body localization MBL. I know, this is the secret
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: sauce that makes physical time crystals actually possible in a lab.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Walk me through the actual mechanics of how this localization
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: acts as an energy shield.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, So normally, if you shoot a laser at a
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: bunch of atoms, they absorb the photons, they get excited,
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: they start jiggling around, and the material heats up. Right.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the energy disperses throughout the system exactly.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: That leads to thermal equilibrium. MBO relies on circumventing that
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: entirely by introducing extreme, meticulously engineered disorder into the quantum system.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Wait, disorder, You intentionally make the internal structure of the
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: material chaotic.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Highly chaotic. You scramble the interactions between the atoms so
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: thoroughly that the particles get mathematically stuck a duck. Yeah,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: they literally cannot share energy with their neighbors anymore. The
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: entire thermalization process is completely halted. So you have this
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: pulsing laser hitting the system, but the disorder traps the
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: atoms in a localized state. They become immune to the
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: heat of the laser.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: So they're essentially wearing quantum noise canceling headphones. The lasers
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: just screaming at them, bombarding them with energy, but they
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: just don't absorb it.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: That's a great analogy. And because they don't absorb the
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: energy and heat up into a chaotic mess, they are
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: able to achieve a synchronized coherent quantum state.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm with you.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Now Here is where the discrete time translation symmetry is
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: finally broken. Let's say you pulse that driving laser every
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: ten microseconds. The laser is basically yelling at the atoms flip, flip,
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: flip every ten microseconds.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: So the atoms flip every ten microseconds, right matching.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: The laser No, and this is the defining signature of
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: the time crystal. The atoms respond at a lower frequency.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: They might decide to flip every twenty microseconds. The driving
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: force operates at period T. The material responds at period
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: two T or maybe three T.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Like pushing the swing. You push the swing every one second,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: but the swing only goes back and forth every two
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: seconds exactly.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: The material is taking an external rhythm and spontaneously generating
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: its own, slower, infinitely stable internal rhythm.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: It broke the time symmetry of the laser pulse, it
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: broke discrete time translation symmetry.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: And once this theoretical framework of flowkes systems and many
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: body localization was published, I mean the race was officially
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: on to physically build one of these things, which.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Brings us to the actual lab experiments. This is where
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: it gets real. Is in twenty seventeen, two entirely different
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: research groups managed to create a time crystal within just
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: weeks of each other, and they use completely different methods.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was an incredible moment in physics. You had
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Chrismunro's lab at the University of Maryland and Mikhael Luken's
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: lab over at Harvard.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: And their approaches highlight just how fundamental this new phase
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: of matter is, right because they achieved the exact same
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: symmetry breaking physics using wildly different architectures. Absolutely, let's look
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: at Monroe's set up at Maryland first, because honestly, it
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: sounds like something straight out of a supervillain's layer. They
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: used a chain of ytterbium ions.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: Terbium yeah, okay, so they trapped ten of these yderbium
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: ions inside a vacuum chamber using highly highly calibrated electromagnetic fields,
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: just floating there, just suspended in nothingness, forming a one
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: dimensional spatial chain. Then they used two separate optical lasers.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: One laser was used to create a magnetic field that
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: essentially communicated with the quantum spins of those etobium ions,
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: entangling them.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: And entanglement meaning the quantum state of one ion is
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: directly tied to the state of another, no matter the distance.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: They act as a single unified quantum system.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, so they're all tangled together. Then the second laser
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: was the driving force. They pulsed the second laser to
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: continuously try and flip the spins.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Of the ions, like pushing the swing exactly.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: But to prevent the system from just absorbing all that
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: laser energy in melting, they programmed the first laser to
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: introduce that crucial disorder, the many body localization.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Right, So they intentionally fired random chaotic interference into the
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: chain to lock the atoms in place. They wouldn't heat.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Up, you got it. So they pulsed the driving laser
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: over and over, and exactly as the math predicted, the
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: terbium ions began oscillating. They flipped their spins, forming a
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: perfectly repeating temporal lattice at exactly half the frequency of
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: the laser chilses. The period doubled, the period doubled, the
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: discrete time symmetry was broken. The Marylynd team had created
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: a physical time crystal.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable. And while Monroe is doing this crazy vacuum chamber
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: setup with lasers and suspended yeterbium, Lucan's team at Harvard
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: is doing an inside a literal diamond.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Lucan's team used a completely different architecture, so a
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: diamond is a very rigid carbon lattice, but natural diamonds
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: have flaws in them. Sometimes a carbon atom is missing
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: and a nitrogen atom slips into the lattice.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Nearby, Okay, a flaw.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: This is called a nitrogen vacancy center. And these centers
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: happen to have their own isolated quantum spins.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: So insteative suspending ions in a vacuum. Like the Maryland team,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: the Harvard team basically just used the rigid physical structure
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: of a diamond to hold their quantum particles in place.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It's brilliant. They took a diamond that was heavily
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: doped with these nitrogen impurities. And here's the best part.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: The impurities themselves provided the necessary disorder for many body localization.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, they didn't even need a separate laser to create
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the chaos.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: No, the chaotic natural flaw and the diamond's physical structure
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: naturally trapped the energy. So they blasted the diamond with
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: microwave pulses to flip the spins, and they observed the
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: exact same phenomenon.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: The time crystal signature YEAP.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: The nitrogen vacancy centers oscillated at a sub harmonic frequency
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: compared to the microwave pulses, two vastly different environments the
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: exact same new phase of matter.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, but it's important to note for you listening, both
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: of those experiments in twenty seventeen were incredibly fragile. Like
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: they proved the physics work. Yes, but the time crystals
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: only lasted for a tiny, tiny fraction of a second
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: before the guantum states degraded.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Right, the environment still found a way to bleed in
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: and ruin the symmetry.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the heavy hitter. Twenty twenty one,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Google's Quantum AI division teams up with physicists from Stanford
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: and Princeton and they bring out the Sycamore quantum processor.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: The Google Sycamore experiment was an absolute watershed moment because
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: it moved the time crystal from being a bespoke, highly
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: specialized lage laboratory anomaly into the realm of actual programmble
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: quantum computing.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Right. Because Sycamore is a superconducting quantum processor, it operates
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: at temperatures literally colder than deep space, utilizing macroscopic superconducting
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: circuits as quibbets quibits. Yeah, and just a quick refresher
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: equibit being a quantum bit. A regular classical computer uses
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: bits right transistors that are either open or closed one
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: or zero. E quibbit utilizes quantum superposition to be a
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: very complex combination of one to zero simultaneously, which.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Gives it immense processing power. So Google used twenty of
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Sycamore's quibits to simulate the precise conditions of a time crystal.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Because a quantum processor is inherently designed to manipulate quantum
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: states with extreme precision, they could perfectly calibrate the exact
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: amount of disorder needed for the many body localization.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: They can dial in the chaos exactly, and.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: They could perfectly tune the microwave pulses driving the system.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: And because they were actually using a quantum computer to
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: build it, they could watch the time crystal self correct
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: in real time.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, and that is the most crucial part of the
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty one experiment, because the true phase of matter
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: has to be robust. If you poke a block of
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: ice with a needle, it doesn't instantly sublimate into steam.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: It resists small perturbations. So the Google team intentionally introduced
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: errors into the microwave pulses.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Like they tried to mess it up on purpose.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: On purpose. They didn't flip the quivts of perfect one
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: hundred and eighty degrees. They flipped them, say one hundred
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: and seventy five degrees.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Give it a sloppy rhythm.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: And the time crystal ignored the errors completely. The quivits absorbed.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: The sloppy pulses utilize the many body localization to trap
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: that excess energy and maintain their perfect sub harmonic oscillation.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Anyway, the temporal lattice held its structure.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: It held perfectly. It was an error correcting macroscopic quantum state.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: An error correcting macroscopic quantum state. Let's pivot to what
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: this actually means for the future, because I mean, this
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: phrase is exactly the holy grail that computer scientists have
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: been hunting for. It really is the theoretical physics of symmetry.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Breaking is fascinating, sure, but time crystals are basically the
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: architectural skeleton key for quantum computing, aren't.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: They They could be. To really appreciate the utility of
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: a time crystal, here, we have to look at why
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: quantum computing has been stuck in what we call the
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: ni s q era, the noisy intermediate scale quantum era.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: In ice Q, we have built quantum computers. They do work.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: They can perform specific calculations in minutes that would take
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: classical supercomputers ten thousand years.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: The processing power is almost unfathomable. We're talking about simulating
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: complex protein folding to cure diseases, optimizing global logistics networks instantly, Yeah,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: cracking modern encryption protocols in an afternoon, all of that.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: But they are currently paralyzed by an opponent called decoherence.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Decoherence the enemy of quantum.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Stakes exactly equipit relies on superposition and entanglement to perform
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: those calculations. But these quantum states are arguing, believe, the
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: most delicate phenomena in the universe. If a kolbit interacts
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: with a single stray photon, or a microscopic fluctuation in
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: the magnetic field, or a tiny variance in thermal radiation,
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: the quantum state just collapses. The superposition is destroyed, gone,
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: the quipit goes from being a magical quantum processor back
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: to just a boring classical zero or one. The computer
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: literally gets amnesia mid calculation.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: I always think of a complex quantum calculation like a
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: massive symphony orchestra.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Oh that's a good analogy, right.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: So you have a hundred musicians, your equibits, all playing
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: highly intricate, heavily entangled pieces of music together. They have
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: to be perfectly synchronized. But the concert hall is filled
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: with audience members coughing, dropping programs, whispering.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: The environmental noise exactly.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: The environmental noise leaks onto the stage. One violinist loses
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: her place because of a cough, which throws off the cellist,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: which cascades through the entire orchestra, and suddenly the beautiful
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: symphony collapses into just noise, that is decoherence.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: That is exactly what happens. And the current solution to
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: this has basically been trying to build better soundproofing, right.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Right, like cryogenic dilution refrigerators, cooling the processors to basically absolute.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Zero, heavy electromagnetic shielding. We try to completely isolate the
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: cudits from the universe. But the problem is the universe
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: always finds a way in. You cannot isolate a system perfectly.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: It's impossible.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: So what's the new paradigm.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: The new paradigm is fault tolerance. And error correction. What
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: if instead of trying to silence the audience, which is impossible,
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: you just give the orchestra an unignorable, indestructible metronome.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: A conductor whose rhythm fundamentally cannot be broken by a
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: cough or a dropped program.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly, because a time crystal is a topological phase of
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: matter protected by its own quantum disorder, its rhythmic oscillation
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: is utterly immune to small environmental noises. Remember the Google
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: experiment we just talked about.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: They gave the time crystal sloppy pulses, and it just ignored.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: Them, right, It maintained it's rigid temporal lattice anyway.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: So how do you actually pair this indestructible metronome with
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: the fragile quibits like are we building the actual process
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: or out of time crystals?
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: The idea is that you embed the computational quibits within
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: the temporal structure of the time crystal itself. The rigid,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: repetitive oscillation of the time crystal basically acts as a
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: background stabilizing field. If you entangle the quantum information you
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: are trying to process with the robust time translation symmetry,
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: breaking rhythm of the crystal, The fragile data becomes shielded, so.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: The quibbits are literally forced to march to the unbreakable
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: beat of the time crystal. Precisely so. A stray photon
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: hits the system trying to knock a quibit out of superposition,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: but the time crystal's lattice is so rigid and stable
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: that it just absorbs the perturbation and forces the quibit
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: back to alignment.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: That's the theory. The time crystal acts as an autonomous quantum.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Error corrector autonomous so it just does it on its
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: own right.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: It doesn't require a massive, separate classical supercomputer to constantly
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: monitor the quibbots and fix errors as they happen, which
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: is how classical error correction works, and it's incredibly resource intensive.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: The time crystal material itself simply by existing in its
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: ground state oscillation continuously shepherds the quibots back into coherence.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: It's passive stabilization. We are literally using a bizarre quirk
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: of space time geometry, the fact that matter can crystallize
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: across time to cage the fragility of quantum mechanics.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: It is the ultimate application of what was once just
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: abstract theoretical physics. I mean, we discovered a completely new
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: way the universe organizes existence, and within a single decade
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: we are figuring out how to use that organization to
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: protect information from entropy.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: It's staggering. I mean we started today by looking at
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: a concept that literally felt like science fiction, a ticking
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: clock with no battery that just ticks forever. We tore
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: down the entire definition of a phase of matter, stripping
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: away our reliance on physical space and realizing that lattices
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: can exist entirely in the dimension of time.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: We weeded through the paradoxes of stable motion without extra
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: energy too, understanding how many body localization prevents a driven
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: quantum system from ever reaching thermal equilibrium, which is what
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: allows it to spontaneously break discrete time translation symmetry in
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: the first place. And we trace the timeline from Frank
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Wilchek's very controversial theory back in twenty twelve, past the
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: mathematical proofs that tried to kill it, all the way
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: to the laser driven heterbium ions in Maryland and the
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: superconducting sycamore processor at Google.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: And we arrived at the threshold of the next technological
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: epoch where these impossible, endlessly ticking crystals might provide the
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: exact architectural stability required to finally bring quantum computing out
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: of the laboratory and into practical reality.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: But you know, the science of time crystals doesn't just
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: give us a new technological tool. It kind of changes
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: our fundamental relationship with reality itself.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Consider the fact that something this profound, a phase of
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: matter that completely redefines the geometry of time, was completely
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: invisible to us just a few years ago. It existed
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: entirely in the blind spots of our mathematics.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: It forces a necessary humility upon the scientific community, I think,
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: because if matter can structure itself in a dimension we
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: previously thought was merely a linear backdrop to the physical universe,
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: and if it possesses properties that blatantly violate classical laws
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: of equilibrium.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: It makes you wonder exactly.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: It leaves you with this lingering question, how much of
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: our everyday observable reality is just one incredibly limited, specific
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: phase of a vastly more complex, deeply hidden cosmic architecture.