First-ever visible 'time crystal' might power the next big tech innovations

A team of physicists at CU Boulder has created the first time crystal that is large enough to be seen with naked eye. This breakthrough makes a bizarre form of matter tangible, opening the door to new technologies. For this achievement, the researchers used liquid crystals — the same material used in LCDs.

A time crystal is an exotic phase of matter — first theorized by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek in 2012 — in which particles exist in a constant state of repeating motion, even in their state of rest, like a clock that runs forever without a battery. While scientists have already created microscopic time crystals with quantum computers, the one from CU Boulder is the first-ever that can be observed directly.

The team — made up of Professor Ivan Smalyukh and his graduate student Hanqing Zhao — achieved this by sandwiching a solution of liquid crystals between two pieces of glass coated with dye. When the researchers exposed them to a specific type of light, the dye molecules squeezed on the liquid crystals, creating thousands of new kinks.

These kinks began to move and interact with each other in complex repeating patterns that can continued to repeat for hours. The patterns were remarkably resistant to external interaction, as they remained unchanged even as the researchers changed the temperature.

The researchers say their creation could have several applications in our everyday life but mentioned two specific applications. It could be used to create a “time watermark” on currency notes that one can simply shine light on, verifying the authenticity of bills by watching the resulting patterns. They also suggest that by stacking different time crystals, they could create incredibly complex patterns, which can potentially be leveraged for storage of data.