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Time Crystals: The Next Breakthrough in Quantum Technology · The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the quark Side. Quantum Physics Podcast, an exploration
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of the fundamental structure of reality, where quantum laws govern matter, energy,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and information. Here, uncertainty is a feature, not a flaw,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and understanding begins at the smallest scales.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Happy Valentine's Day. It is Saturday, February fourteenth, twenty twenty six.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: And look, I know exactly what you're thinking.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: Oh, I think they do two.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: You're expecting us to pivot into. I don't know the
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: chemistry of oxytocin, or maybe the socioeconomic history of the
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: greeting card industry.
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: Or maybe why we give people roses which are covered
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: in thorns. Seems like a mixed.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Message, exactly a thorny flower as the ultimate symbol of affection.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: But we are going in a completely completely different direction.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: Today, a very very different direction.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: While the rest of the world is focusing on love,
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: we're focusing on something well arguably more fundamental to the
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: human experience, even if it sounds a lot less romantic.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: We are talking about precision, We're talking about order. We
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: are talking about the ticking of the clock, but not
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: just any clock. We are diving into a story that
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: broke well essential yesterday about a strange, complicated, and frankly
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: mind mending relationship between physics and time itself.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: It's a story about order, chaos and a state of
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: matter that until very recently, and by recently I mean
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: the last decade, people didn't even think could exist.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: In fact, some very smart people proved it couldn't.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Exist until they were proven wrong.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: Until they are proven wrong.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Exactly, we are talking about time crystals. And before you
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: hit pause or you know, roll your eyes, I need to.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Make a disclaimer necessary one.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: No, we are not talking about an infinity stone from
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: a Marvel movie. We aren't talking about a plot device
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: from Doctor Who or some mystical New age healing stone
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: you buy on Etsy to align your chakras.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: Although to be fair, the name time crystal does sound
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: incredibly sci fi.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Oh it's perfect sci fi.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: It sounds like something you'd find in a bad paperback
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: novel from the nineteen seventies.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: It sounds totally made up. It sounds like flux capacitor.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: But it is hard science. We are talking about a
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: new state of matter that breaks the rules of how
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: we think structure and time actually work, and the reason
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: we are talking about it today is because of our
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: report that just came out.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: That's right. This comes from a report published yesterday February thirteen,
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty six, on fizz dot org, written by Sam Jarman.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: But the core of our discussion, the meat on the bone,
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: is based on a new study published in Physical Review Letters.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Which, for those who don't follow the academic publishing horse race,
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: is pretty much the heavy hitter of physics journals.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's the top tier.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: If you're publishing in PRL, you aren't just speculating, you've
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: got the receipts.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: It is the gold standard. The research was led by
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: lu Milaviati at the Abdessalam International Center for Theoretical Physics
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: in Italy, and what they have put for word is well.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: It's a blueprint, a blueprint for what exactly.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: Or a clock, but not a clock like the one
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: on your wall or even the one on your phone.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: They are proposing a quantum clock built on the backbone
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: of these time crystals.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: So our mission today is to unpack this. We need
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: to understand what these exotic systems are, and that is
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: the technical term exotic, which usually means we don't fully
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: understand it yet.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: Right, it's physics code for it.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: This is weird and how they could revolutionize everything from
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: how we navigate the globe to how we detect magnetic fields.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: And honestly, it touches on the fundamental limits of quantum mechanics.
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: It's not just about knowing what time it is. It's
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: about understanding the nature of time itself and how we
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: measure it against the background of a chaotic universe.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, that is a big promise. But before we get
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: to the philosophy, we have to get through the physics.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: And I want to do this right. We aren't going
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: to skim the surface today.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Noh, let's get into the weeds.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: We are going to get into the weeds because that's
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: where the interesting stuff is. So let's start at the
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: very beginning. The phrase time crystal. It combines two words
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: we know, but puts them together in a way that
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: feels wrong.
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: It does feel wrong.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: We know what a crystal is, diamonds, quartz, salt, ice, right,
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  Speaker 2: but when a physicist says crystal, what are they actually defining?
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Because I assume they aren't talking about jewelry.
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  Speaker 3: So yeah, let's strip away the aesthetic aspect. Yeah, in
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: condensed matter physics, A crystal is defined very simply as
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: a system that breaks spatial translation symmetry.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Okay, you drop the s word early symmetry. We need
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: to unpack that immediately. What does it mean to break
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: spatial translation symmetry?
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Okay? Imagine you are floating in an infinite empty void,
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: or simpler, imagine a perfectly smooth, infinite pool of water.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: It is completely uniform. Got it. If you close your
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: eyes and I move you three feet to the left
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: and you open your eyes, does the world look different, No, it.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Looks exactly the same.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: It's just more water exactly. That system has continuous spatial
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: translation symmetry. The laws of physics and the arrangement of
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: matter are the same everywhere. It doesn't matter where you are.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: But now let's freeze that water into ice.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Okay, so now we have a solid block.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: But if you zoom in with a microscope, that ice
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: isn't smooth anymore. The water molecules have locked into a
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: rigid lattice structure a pattern. A pattern. Maybe they are
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: arranged in hexagons. Now, if you stand on a molecule
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: and I move you a tiny bit to the left, say,
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: into the empty space between molecules, does the world look different.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, because now I'm not on a molecule anymore. I'm
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: in the gap.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: Correct. But if I move you exactly one lattice unit
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: to the last ye, the exact distance between two molecules,
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: you land on another molecule and it looks the same again.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: So the symmetry isn't continuous anymore. I can't just move
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: any distance and have it look the same.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: That's it.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: I have to move specific, discrete distances to see the
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: same pattern exactly.
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  Speaker 3: The formation of the crystal has broken the continuous symmetry
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: of space. It has chosen a specific pattern. It has
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: imposed order on the chaos. We call this a crystal,
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: a repeating pattern in space.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, of salt, diamonds, checkerboards, they all break spatial symmetry. Now,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: how do we get to a time crystal? Because my
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: brain wants to imagine a diamond that travels through time,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: which I know is wrong.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: That is wrong, but it's a fun image.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: That is a good image.
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: No, to understand a time crystal, you have to take
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: that same logic we just use for space and apply
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  Speaker 3: it to time.
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  Speaker 2: So time has symmetry.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: In physics, yes, we have time translation symmetry. It basically
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: means that the laws of physics don't care when you
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: run an experiment. If you mix baking soda and vinegar
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: today at noon, it bubbles. If you do it tomorrow
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: at midnight, it bawls. The same way. The laws are
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: constant in time, energy is conserved, the system is stable.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, So breaking that symmetry would mean what that the
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: laws of physics change.
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  Speaker 3: Not that the laws change, but that the system itself
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  Speaker 3: refuses to be constant in time. It means that even
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: in its lowest energy state, its most comfortable rested state,
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: it is changing. It is moving.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack that sattern repeating in time.
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  Speaker 3: Imagine a material that, instead of looking the same, if
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: you look three inches to the left, it.
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  Speaker 2: Looks the same if you look three seconds later.
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  Speaker 3: That's exactly it. It has a configuration that oscillates, it
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  Speaker 3: returns to its original state. It fixed intervals. It has
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: a temporal structure. It effectively creates its own timeline. Tick
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  Speaker 3: tick tick.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: But wait, I have to play the skeptic here. Isn't
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: that just anything that moves like a clock pendulum repeats
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: in time? My heart beats in time. The turn signal
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: on my car repeats in time. Why are those not
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: time crystals? Why do we need a fancy new term
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: for vibration.
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  Speaker 3: That is the million dollar question, and this is where
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: it gets subtle and where we have to talk about thermodynamics.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: A pendulum, a heart, a turn signal. They all need
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  Speaker 3: energy to keep going. They need fuel. If you stop
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  Speaker 3: winding the Grandfather clock, the pendulum stops because of friction
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  Speaker 3: and air resistance. If you stop powering the turn signal,
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: the light goes off. They are constantly losing energy to heat.
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  Speaker 3: They eventually wind down to a stop to equilibrit Right.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Entropy comes for us. All the universe wants to be
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: a lukewarm soup.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: Ideally, yes, yeah. In a standard system, the ground state,
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  Speaker 3: the state of lowest energy, where the system settles when
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: you take away all the heat and excitement. Is static.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: It's motionless, a rock sitting at the bottom of a hill.
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  Speaker 2: But for a time crystal. You're saying, the ground state
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: itself is moving.
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  Speaker 3: Precisely, a time crystal exhibits this repeating motion, this oscillation
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: in its lowest possible energy state. It's not moving because
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: you are pushing it. No external force, no external force.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: It's moving, because movement is its natural state of being.
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  Speaker 3: It breaks time translation symmetry spontaneously.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: WHOA stop there. You just described a system that moves
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  Speaker 2: forever in its ground state without energy input.
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  Speaker 3: I did.
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  Speaker 2: That sounds suspiciously like a perpetual motion machine. And the
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: last time I checked, the first law of filmodynamics says
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: no free lunch. Why isn't this violating physics?
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: I love that you went there, because that was the
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: exact controversy when this was first proposed. Image Nobel laureate
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: Frank Wilchek propose this idea around twenty twelve, he asked,
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: can a system break time symmetry the way a crystal
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: breaks space symmetry? And the initial reaction for the community
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: was basically, Frank, You've lost it. That's perpetual motion.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: So how is it not? How does it get around that?
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: Because of the definition of work, A perpetual motion machine
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: is impossible because it claims you can extract energy from
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: it forever.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Right, you can power something with it.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: You can hook it up to a turbine and power
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: a light bulb a time crystal cannot do that?
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Why not? If it's moving, surely I can hook a
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: gear to it.
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  Speaker 3: No, because the system is in its ground state, it
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: has no excess energy to give you. If you try
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: to hook a gear to it, you are interacting with it.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: You're adding resistance that collapses the quantum state. The moment
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: you try to extract work, the time crystal breaks, it
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: stops being a time crystal. So it moves forever, but
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: it's useless for powering your car.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: So it's a closed loop.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: It's closed loop. It violates no laws because it generates
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: no power.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: It's like a ghost pacing in a hallway. It's moving,
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: but it can't turn a doorknob.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: That is a surprisingly accurate analogy. Yes, a perfect frictionless ghost.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Okay, So Willcheck proposes this in twenty twelve, everyone says, maybe,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: then what happened because you mentioned we've known they exist
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: for a decade.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: Well, there was a bit of drama. Some Japanese physicists
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: Watanabi and Oshikawa proved a theorem, effectively saying will Check
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: is wrong. You can't have a time crystal and thermal equilibrium.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: So it can't happen in that ground state you described, not.
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: In a simple static equilibrium system. It was a heavy blow.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: It looked like the idea was dead.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: So the idea died.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: No, it pivoted. Physicists are clever. They realized, Okay, maybe
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: we can't have them in perfect equilibrium, but what if
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: we have them in a driven system, a system that
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: we poke periodically, but the system responds in a weird way.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: This is what led to the twenty sixteen experiments.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: Exactly, in twenty sixteen, two different groups, one led by
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Chris Monroe and Maryland and another by Mikhyle Luken at
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: Harvard created the first discrete time crystals.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: And how did they do that?
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: They took ions, trap them in electromagnetic field, and hit
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: them with lasers in a pulse bang bang, bang, a
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: regular rhythm.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: So they were adding energy. That sounds like the pendulum.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: Again, they were adding energy. But here's the magic trick.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: They hit the system with a laser every t seconds.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: But the system didn't repeat every two seconds. It didn't
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: know it repeated every two t seconds or three t seconds.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: It broke the symmetry of the driver. It adopted its own, slower,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: more stable rhythm.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Wait, I want to make sure I get this. It's
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: like if I'm jumping rope and the rope comes around
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: every second, but I only jump every two seconds.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: Yes, you have created a new period that is different
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: from the driving force. You're not just a puppet of
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: the rope. You've established your own.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Pattern and it holds that pattern rigidly, incredibly rigidly.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: That was the proof that the material was creating its
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: own timeline. It wasn't just mirroring the laser. It was
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: doing its own thing, locking into a sub harmonic frequency.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: So ten years ago we proved they exist. We found
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: the loophole.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: We did We realized, Okay, nature actually allows this weird behavior. Yeah,
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: but for the last ten years the conversation has been
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: that's a cool party trick physics, but what can we
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: actually do with it?
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: It's the classic solution in search of.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: A problem exactly. And that brings us to twenty twenty
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: six because the study we are looking at today, the
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: Viati paper, moves the goalposts from look at this weird
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: thing to let's build a machine with this.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: And the machine they want to build is the most
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: precise clock in the universe.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: That's the ambition. And to understand why that is such
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: a big deal, we have to talk about the villain
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: of our story. The villain yes, the current status quill
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: the atomic clock.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Which begs the question what is wrong with the clocks
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: we have now? I mean, my phone seems pretty accurate.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: The GPS on my car gets me to the grocery store.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: We have caesium clocks, strontium clocks. Why are scientists obsessed
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: with making better clocks? Are we just splitting hairs at
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: this point.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: It might seem like that, but for science and technology
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: we are absolutely not splitting hairs. To answer that, we
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: have to look at how we define time right now
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: at the highest level, the level that governs GPS, the Internet,
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: banking systems, and deep space navigation. We rely on optical atomic.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Clocks, and these are the best we have.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: They are marvels of engineering. The latest strontium lattice clock,
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: for instance, wouldn't lose or gain a second in about
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: fifteen billion.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Years, longer than the age of the universe exactly.
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: So they are incredible, but they have some serious achilles heels.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: I've heard the term, but what is actually happening inside
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: an atomic clock? It's not gears and springs, obviously.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: No, it's about energy levels and light. So let's look
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: at a modern optical lattice clock. Imagine you have a
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: vacuum chamber inside you trap thousands of atoms, usually strontium
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: or yuterbium, using interfering laser beams.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: You're holding them with light.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Holding them with light, were eating a shape like an
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: egg crate. We call it an optical lattice. Each egg
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: in the crate holds one atom, keeping them from bumping
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: into each other and messing up the measurement.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, I've got my atoms. They are stuck in the
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: egg crate.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: You cool them down, atom mean really cool. We use
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: lasers to slow them down, a process called Doppler cooling
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: to get them to microkelvin's barely above absolute zero. They're
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: almost perfectly still.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Okay, so we have frozen trapped atoms.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: Now what then you bring in the clock laser. This
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: is a separate ultra stable laser tune too, a very
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: specific frequency of light. You shine it on the atoms.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: If the frequency is exactly right, I mean exactly, it
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: will excite the electrons in the atom to jump to
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: a higher energy orbit.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: The quantum leap we were talking about the quantum leap.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: It's a very narrow resonance think of it like a
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: key fitting a lock. Only one frequency will work. When
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: you find that exact frequency that makes the jump happen,
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: you know, okay, this frequency is our standard. You count
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: the oscillations of that light. That is your tick.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: So the atom is the reference, it's the tuning for
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: the laser is the bow playing the violin.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: That is a perfect analogy. The atom is the tuning fork,
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: which is perfect and unchanging. The laser is the bow.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: But here is the problem with current technology.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: What's the problem.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: The ticked doesn't actually come from the atom. It comes
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: from the laser. The laser is the thing generating the wave.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: We just use the atom to check if the laser
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: is correct.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: So we're constantly asking the atom is this right? Is
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: this right? Am I still on key?
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: Yes, we lock the laser to the atom in a
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: feedback loop. But lasers. Lasers are man made. They are imperfect.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: They have what we call phase noise. The mirrors in
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: the laser cavity vibrate due to heat the electronics.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Fluctuations, so the bow is shaky.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: The bow is shaky, and because the bow is shaky,
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: we have to constantly correct it. This process creates a
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: limit on stability. We are fighting a constant war against decoherence.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: What's that It's the laser noise scrambling the quantum information
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: in the atoms. It's the external world messing up your
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: perfect quantum state.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: And that limits how precise the clock can be.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: It limits the coherence time. Ideally, you want to interrogate
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: the atom for a long time to get a precise measurement,
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: but because the laser is noisy, you can't. You have
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: to take short snapshots. It limits the ultimate precision.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: So the source material highlights these drawbacks. What are they specifically?
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: Yes, it lists three big costs. First, complexity, these systems
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: are absolute beasts. To manage you need vacuum chambers, multiple
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: lasers for cooling, repumping, trapping, and the clock laser itself.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: It's a room full of equipment, so.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: You can't exactly wear one on your wrist or even
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: put one in a small satellite easily.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: Definitely not. Second, they are fragile. They are incredibly sensitive
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: to vibrations and temperature changes. If you shake them, the
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: lattice breaks, the atoms fall out. And the third energy,
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: and this is the big one for our discussion regarding
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: the time crystal. To run an optical atomic clock, you
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: are constantly blasting it with energy. You are driving the system.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: You are forcing the electrons up, they fall down, you
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: push them.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Up again, have to keep pushing the swing. If you
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: stop pushing, the swinging stops.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: Exactly, you're constantly pumping energy into the system to force
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: it to oscillate. This is an active system, and in
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: quantum mechanics, active systems are prone to noise. The very
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: act of pushing the atom disturbs it.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: So we have these amazing clocks, but they are energy hogs,
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: They are fragile, and they only work because we are
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: constantly bullying the atoms into keeping time.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: That's a very colorful way to put it, but yes,
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: we are forcing order onto a chaotic system, and that
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: brings us to Ludmilaviatti and her team.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Enter the time crystal.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: Enter the time crystal.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: So the proposal from this news study published just this
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: month February twenty twenty six is to throw out the
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: idea of the bullied atom and replace it with a
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: quantum time crystal clock.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: Right, And the core difference. The thing that makes this
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: revolutionary is that a time crystal does not require that
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: continuous energy intensive external excitation to sustain its oscillation in
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: the same way.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: This goes back to what we said earlier. The rhythm
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: is internal. It's not coming from a laser.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: Yes, the repeating pattern, the tick of the clock emerges
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: from the intrinsic interactions within the system itself.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: I need an analogy because intrinsic interactions sounds like corporate
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: speech for a team building exercise.
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: Fair enough, Okay, think about the atomic clock the old way.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: Like a class of students trying to clap in unit
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: in Okay, to get them to clap together, the teacher
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: the laser has to stand at the front and conduct them. Clap, clap, clap.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: If the teacher stops, the students stop or fall out
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: a rhythm.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's the external drive. Makes sense.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: Now, imagine a time crystal. The teacher leaves the room,
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: but the students they hold hands. They're connected, they are entangled.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: They're quantum mechanically entangled. And because of the way they
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: are connected, the specific physics of their interaction, a rhythm
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: emerges from the group.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: So it's not imposed from the outside.
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: Not at all. One student squeezes a hand, the next
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: feels it and a wave of clapping propagates through the
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: group and sustains itself. They keep the beat perfectly, not
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: because someone is forcing them, but because the structure of
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: their connection demands it.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: So the rhythm is a property of the collective, not
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: the result of a conductor exactly.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: It provides a natural, built in rhythm. In physics terms,
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: we say the system has a many body Hamiltonian that
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: protects the coherence.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Many body Hamiltonian. That sounds like a prog rock band.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: It does, but it essentially means. The math describing the
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: energy of the system depends on all the particles interacting
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: with each other, not just individually, and this interaction creates
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: a stiffness or a rigidity in time.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Rigidity is a good word, like how a diamond is
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: rigid in space. You can't just push one atom out
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: of place.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: Yes, that's a perfect way to think about it. If
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: you try to bump one atom in a diamond, the
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: bonds with this neighbors hold it in place. In a
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: time crystal, if noise tries to bump the timing of
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: one atom, the entanglement with its neighbors pulls it back
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: into rhythm. It is self correcting.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: That is wild. So we are moving from a a
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: high maintenance model to a self sustaining model.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: That is the hope, that's the promise of this whole idea.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: But how do you actually build a clock out of that?
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, a circle of students holding hands is great,
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: but the Audi's team isn't working with people. They're working
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: with quantum particles. What did they do right?
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: And this brings us to the simulation because to be clear,
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: and I have to stress this, what this report details
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: is a mathematical demonstration.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: They haven't built it yet.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: They have not built it. They simulated this engine on
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: a powerful computer to see if it could actually keep
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: time better than the conventional method.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: So let's look at the setup. What did they throw
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: into the computer? What were the ingredients?
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: They simulated an ensemble of one hundred quantum particles.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: Just one hundred. That seems low for something this revolutionary,
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: you'd think.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: So, But in the quantum world, simulating one hundred interacting
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: particles is actually a huge computational task. The complexity grows exponentially.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: The number of possible states is two to the power
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: of one hundred, which is a number larger than the
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: number of atoms in the earth.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, never mind, one hundred is a lot.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: You can't just run this on a laptop. They likely
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: use sophisticated approximations like tensor networks to model it efficiently.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, fair enough, one hundred particles, and what are these
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: particles doing.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: Each of these particles acts as a spin. You can
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: think of it like a tiny magnet that can point up.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Or down binary a quantum bit one or zero.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: Yes, but quantum so it can be a superposition of
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: up and down at the same time. Now, they wanted
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: to see if they could use this system to measure
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: time using a technique called Ramsey interferometry.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Ramsey interferometry, we need to define that. Is that standard practice.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: It's the gold standard way we measure time in quantum mechanics.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: It's a three step dance.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's hear the steps.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: Step one, you hit all the atoms with a quick
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: pulse of microwave or laser radiation to put them in
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: a superposition. Get them all spinning perfectly synchronized.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Like spinning a top. One hundred tops all starting at
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: the same time.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: Step two, you wait, this is the interrogation time. You
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: let the atoms evolve freely. You let them tick. This
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: is where the clock is actually running.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, so you just let them do their thing.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: Step three, you hit them with a second identical pulse
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: to reout their state. This second pulse essentially stops the
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: clock and allows you to measure how much their collective
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: state has changed. By comparing the state at the end
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: to the start, you know exactly how much time has passed.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: Got it. Pulse wait, pulse, measure the difference.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: Now in the simulation, they compare two different phases. This
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: is the showdown part of the study.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Phase one versus phase two, the old versus the new.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: Phase one is the conventional phase. In this simulation, they
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: set up the particles so they would behave like a
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: normal atomic clock. The particles were independent, They didn't talk
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: to each other. They just evolved on their.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Own, the lonely drummer phase, each one trying to keep
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: its own beat right.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: And then they tried to measure time. Specifically, they looked
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: at the stability of the clock, the precision. As they
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: increased the interrogation time that weight period and what happened
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: It hit the standard quantum limit. Basically, as time went on,
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: small noises. Tiny fluctuations in the environment caused the atoms
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: to dephase. They lost their synchronization.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: They started drifting.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: They started drifting, the signal got blurry. The precision degraded rapidly.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: If you imagine those hundred spinning tops, they all start
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: spinning together. But after a while, summer a little faster,
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: summer a little slower, and the whole thing is a mess.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: So the clock loses track of time if you wait
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: too long.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: Exactly. Then they switched the simulation to phase two, the
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: time crystalline.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Phase, the entangled orchestra.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: They turned on the interactions. They set the parameters of
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: the simulation so that the particles were strongly coupled to
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: each other. They created that stiffness we talked about. They
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: made the students hold.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Hands, so now the tops are all connected by invisible strings.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: A great way to put it. And they ran the
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: exact same Ramsey sequence pulse, wait, pulse, and the result.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: As a result, the precision remained far more robust. The
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: graph I'm looking at Fig. Three in the paper mentally
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: right now, shows that the variance, which is the measure
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: of error, stayed flat for a much much longer time
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: than in the conventional case.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: So the orchestra stayed in sync perfectly.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: The intrinsic interactions protected the phase of the clock. The
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: entanglent thought off the decoherence from the environment.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Here's where it gets really interesting for me, because usually
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: in engineering, if you want more control, you add more control.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: You add more sensors, more feedback loops, more.
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: Power, right, the brute force approach.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: But this result suggests that if you want the ultimate precision,
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: you actually have to let go. You have to stop
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: forcing the system and let it find its own stability
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: through internal connection.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: That is a profound observation, and it's absolutely true. The
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: stability of the time crystal comes from the fact that
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: it is a many body system. It distributes the information
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: of the time across all one hundred particles.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: It sounds like distributed computing or a blockchain. Almost the
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: record isn't in one place, it's everywhere, so it's harder
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: to corrupt.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: Very similar logic. If one particle gets knocked out a
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: rhythm by a bit of noise, the other ninety nine
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: pull it back in line. We call this Heisenberg limited scaling,
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: or something close to it. It beats the standard quantum
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: limit because the particles are acting as a single giant
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: quantum object rather than one hundred small ones.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: So we have a simulation that says, hey, this weird
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: state of matter we found ten years ago. It actually
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: makes a better clock than the best technology we have today.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: In theory, yes, right, And specifically, it solves that external
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: drive problem we talked about. Because the rhythm is internal.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: You don't need a nowsy laser to constantly drive the beat.
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: You just need to initialize it and let it run.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: It's a passive clock.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: So yeah, what does this mean? Why should the listener care?
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, I love a good clock, but I'm rarely
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: late to meetings because my phone drifted by a nanosecond.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: This feels very esoteric.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: No, for you and me getting coffee, this doesn't matter.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: You will never need a time crystal to catch the bus.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: But for civilization, for our entire technology infrastructure, it matters
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: a lot.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Connect the dots. For us, where do we use clocks
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: that need to be this good?
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: The most obvious application is navigation. We all rely on
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: GPS every single day.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Which works by satellites sending timestamps.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: Yes, your phone listens for signals from multiple satellites. Those
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: satellites are basically just flying atomic clocks. They send a
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: signal saying the time I sent this was exactly twelve
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: zero one. Your phone compares the arrival times of signals
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: from four different satellites to figure out where you are
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: in three dimensional.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Space triangulation or I guess quadrangulation.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: Right, But the accuracy of that location depends entirely on
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: the accuracy of the clocks. Light travels very fast, about
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: one foot per nanosecond a foot per nanosecond, so if
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: the clock on the satellite is off by just a
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: few nanoseconds, the error in your position could be several feet.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: So if the clock drifts, my GPS thinks I'm driving
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: in the river instead of on.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: The bridge exactly Now, for your car, an error of
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: a few feet is fine, but imagine a world of
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: autonomous vehicles, drones delivering packages, and a growded city flying taxis.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: They need to know where they are within inches, not feet,
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: and they need to know it instantly without fail.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: So we need better clocks in space, more stable clocks.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: And we need them to be stable, robust, and low power. Remember,
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: current atomic clocks are fragile and power hungry. If we
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: can build a time crystal clock, it could be smaller,
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: require less power because it's self sustaining, and be more
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: robust against the harsh radiation and vibration environment of space.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: That makes sense better GPS, safer self driving cars. But
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: the report also mentions sensors. That seems like a different application.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: Entirely it is, but it's based on the same principle
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: of stability. The source specifically mentions ultrasensitive detectors of magnetic fields.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: This is magnetometry.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: How does a clock detect a magnetic field?
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: Well, remember that these particles are spins. They are essentially
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: tiny magnets. The rhythm of the time crystal, the frequency
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: of its oscillation, depends on the magnetic environment. It's in
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: oh I see if an external magnetic field is present,
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: it slightly alters the energy levels of the spins, which
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: in turn changes the ticking rate of the clock in
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: a very precise, predictable way.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: So it's a sensor. You measure the change in the
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: ticking to measure the field.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: A quantum sensor. And because the time crystal is so
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: stable against random noise, it becomes incredibly sensitive to specific
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: signals like a magnetic field. It's like having a perfectly
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: silent room where you can hear even the quietest whisper.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: What would we use that for?
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: Everything from mineral exploration finding deposits of ore underground without digging,
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: to non invasive medical imaging brain imaging. Your brain works
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: by firing neurons. Those electrical currents create tiny, tiny magnetic fields. Currently,
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: we use meg machines to detect them, but they are huge,
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: they're expensive, and they require liquid helium cooling. A time
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: crystal sensor could theoretically be a small room temperare device
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: that is far more sensitive, allowing us to map brain
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: activity with unprecedented detail. Wow.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: Okay, so we're talking about a fundamental leap in sensing technology.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: It's not just about time, it's about measuring the invisible
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: forces of the world with incredible precision.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: Yes, but and there is always a butt And as
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: the skeptic here, you should be waiting for it.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: I was waiting for it. I've been looking at the
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: time stamp of our discussion and realizing we haven't solved
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: the world's problems yet. Can I go to the hardware
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: store and buy a time crystal clock today.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: No, you absolutely cannot. You can't even buy one from
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: a high tech lab.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Yet, why not If the simulation works, why don't we
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: have the device? It sounds like the blueprint is there.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: Because, as I mentioned, this study by Viati and her
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: team is a mathematical demonstration. It is a simulation. They
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: prove that the physics works on paper and in a
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: computer model.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: There is a big difference between a computer model and
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: a physical device, a huge difference.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: The report explicitly quotes that there is a long road
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: to practical applications.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: What are the roadblocks? What stands between us and this
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: quantum future?
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: Well, think about the requirements. To make this work. You
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: need to create an ensemble of one hundred or more
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: particles that are perfectly controlled and strongly interacting, and you
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: need to keep them coherent for a long time.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: We can do that with quantum computers, right, Yeah, Google
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: and IBM are building chips with lots of quibits.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: They are, but those systems are still incredibly noisy and
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: error prone. Keeping one hundred particles entangled and coherent for
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: a long period of time is the holy grail of
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: quantum computing. We are getting better at it, but we
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: aren't there yet. The engineering challenges are immense.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: So the time crystal clock relies on the same tech
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: as quantum computers largely.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Yes, it needs trapped ion technology or Ryberg atoms. You
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: need to isolate these particles in a vacuum, cool them
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: to near absolute zero, and then use lasers to engineer
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: the interactions so they talk to each other in just
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: the right way to form the time crystal state.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: So we are still talking about a room full of
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: lasers and vacuum pumps. It's not a chick been a
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: phone yet for now.
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: Yes, we're at the Wright Brothers glider stage of this technology.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: Actually no, we're at the wind Tuttle blueprint stage. We
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: know the aerodynamics work, we know the math holds up.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: Now someone has to actually bend the wood and stitch
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: the canvas.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: But the hope is that this paper is the spark
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: that lights the fire.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: Exactly. The goal of publishing this in Physical Review letters
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: is to get the experimentalists excited. VIATI is basically saying, hey,
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: to all my friends in the labs, look what the
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: math says. If you build this, it will work.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Here's the recipe and knowing physicists, they will tig that dare.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, the race is on Now. There are labs
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: in Boulder, in Maryland, in Innsbruck that are likely reading
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: this paper this morning and thinking can we reconfigure our
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: trap to run this protocol.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: It is fascinating to think about the timeline here. In
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: twenty twelve, this was just a crazy idea in Frank
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Wilcheck's head that everyone laughed at.
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: Right perpetual motion.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: In twenty sixteen we saw it in a lab and realized, okay,
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: it's real. Now in twenty twenty six we have the
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: blueprint for a machine that uses it.
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: It's a wrap acceleration. Usually new states of matter take
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: decades to go from discovery to application. Superconductivity took half
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: a century. This might happen in fifteen or twenty years
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: from discovery to a working device.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: It really is incredible. So let's synthesize this. We've covered
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: symmetry breaking, we've bashed traditional atomic clocks, and we've built
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: a virtual time crystal. What is the big takeaway for me?
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: The takeaway is a shift in philosophy for centuries. Precision
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: meant control, It meant applying force. It meant holding nature
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: down and forcing it to be regular clockwork, gears, pendulums, lasers.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: We imposed order on the world. We beat the chaos
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: into submission.
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: Yes, but this new research suggests that the ultimate order,
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: the ultimate precision, comes from surrendering control. It comes from
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: creating the right conditions and then letting a system settle
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: into its own natural quantum rhythm.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: Moving from systems we have to force to keep time
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: to systems that keep time because.
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: Of what they are beautifully put. It's a move from
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: artificials to ability to intrinsic stability.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: It really changes how you look at a clock. It's
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: not just a tool. It's a reflection of how we
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: interact with the universe. Are we fighting it or are
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: we dancing with it?
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: And that leads to a final thought. I want to
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: leave with the listener little something to moll over. What's
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: that We are taught in school that the universe tends
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: toward disorder? The second law of thermodynamics, entropy always increases.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Things fall apart.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: Things fall apart. If you leave a house alone, it
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: gets dusty. If you leave a clock alone, it stops
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: and rusts.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: Right, chaos wins in the end.
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: But here we have a system that, left to its
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: own devices, without continuous external energy, finds a perfect repeating
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: order in time. It doesn't decay into randomness, it locks
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: into structure. So my question is, if we can create
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: machines that have an intrinsic, self sustaining rhythm, does that
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: change how we think about entropy and disorder.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: Are we looking at a future where the most precise
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: measurement of time comes from letting nature do its own thing,
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: rather than for it with a laser.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: I think we are, And I think that suggests that
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: order might be a more fundamental, more resilient property of
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: the universe than we give it credit for. Maybe chaos
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: doesn't always win.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: That is something to chew on while you are eating
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: your Valentine's Day chocolates. Maybe order isn't something we have
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: to build from scratch. Maybe it's waiting for us to
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: just get out of the way.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: I like that thought.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us on this exploration
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: of time crystals. If you want to dive deeper, and
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: I mean really deep, like looking at the Hamiltonians yourself,
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: check the show notes. We've linked the fizz dot org
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: article and the references to the Vatti study and physical review.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: Letters definitely worth a read if you like the technical details.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: Until next time, stay curious.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: And keep watching the clock, or let the.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Clock watch itself. By everyone