Physicists have blown up atoms to hundreds of times their usual size to create a spectacular version of exotic matter that was once thought to be impossible.
The new technique, which was described July 2 in the journal Nature Physics, could also help scientists to build better quantum computers. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.This is exciting to physicists. Usually the laws of physics, which are symmetrical across space and time, creating outcomes that are the same regardless of their direction in space and time.
These remarkable properties have led to many claims that time crystals are perpetual motion machines that violate the second law of thermodynamics, but this isn’t the case. The crystals, which are driven by lasers, simply cannot lose or gain energy — all the laser light hitting them does is cause them to repeat their two-step shuffle. This means that, like many systems containing only a handful of atoms, the second law does not apply to them.