Tag: images

Time Crystals


Sounds like the plot line from schlocky sf. And then there is this:

It may be possible to exploit time crystals to perform computations using 0 energy. It is interesting to speculate that a quantum mechanical system whose states could be interpreted as a collection of qubits, could be engineered to traverse a programmed landscape of structured states in Hilbert space over time.

2017-01-27: New paper by Norman Yao

If crystals have an atomic structure that repeats in space, like the carbon lattice of a diamond, why can’t crystals also have a structure that repeats in time? That is, a time crystal?

In a paper, he describes exactly how to make and measure the properties of such a crystal, and even predicts what the various phases surrounding the time crystal should be — akin to the liquid and gas phases of ice.

This is not mere speculation. 2 groups have already created the first-ever time crystals, using 2 totally different setups.

2021-08-06: They’re real.

Time crystals illuminate something profound about the nature of time. “However much you try to treat [time] as being just another dimension, it is always kind of an outlier.” Einstein made the best attempt at unification, weaving 3D space together with time into a 4D fabric: space-time. But even in his theory, unidirectional time is unique. With time crystals,, “this is the first case that I know of where all of a sudden time is just 1 of the gang.”

Governors Island future?

i have always wondered about governors island. this is an intriguing speculation

Vishaan Chakrabarti unveiled a radical proposal to connect the Financial District to Governors Island through a land bridge made of landfill, replete with a new mixed-use, high-rise, green infrastructure community. The setting for his presentation was a conference called “Zoning the City”, convened by New York City’s Department of City Planning and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and Chakrabarti’s premise was how to zone for a modern Central Business District, for affordability, for livability, for energy and waste, and finally for resilience. He armed his argument with planning instruments and infrastructure developments, such as the transfer of air rights and the provision of waste-to-energy facilities, and he closed with a bold vision to create a projected “8 km2 of development and generate $16.7B in revenue for the city” in a neighborhood that is currently harbor.