People are calling it a breakthrough, a new phase of matter—Google’s invention of Time Crystals has the science and tech scenes in a daze. No, we’re not talking about one of six physics-defying stones evading the grasp of Thanos. This is actual science that apparently defies our current understanding of physics.
Here is a discovery that could move us closer to the most accurate and powerful atomic clocks, gyroscopes, and magnetometers to date, but that’s just the icing on the cake. Who knows what other practical applications a discovery of this magnitude could have.
Within Google’s Sycamore quantum processor, strange things are afoot. As theorised nine years ago by Theoretical Physicist, Frank Wilczek, a new state of matter has been achieved. By blasting strips of superconducting aluminum with microwaves, the system’s qubits—which encode the ones and zeros in quantum computing—were put into a kind of perpetual motion.
