Slashdot Mirror
Physicists Propose "Perpetual Motion" Time Crystals
First time accepted submitter b30w0lf writes "It is commonly understood that crystals exist in a state of matter that is periodic in space. Meanwhile, relativistic physics tells us that we should think of time as being a physical dimension, given similar status to the other spacial dimensions. The combination of these two ideas has lead researchers at the University of Kentucky and MIT to propose special manifestations of matter which would be periodic in both space and time, dubbed 'time crystals.' Time crystals would continually transition between a set of physical states in a kind of perpetual motion. Note: the articles stress that this kind of perpetual motion in no way violates the established laws of thermodynamics. While time crystals remain theoretical, methods have been proposed for creating them. The most obvious application of time crystals is the creation of very precise clocks; however, other applications to time crystals have been proposed, ranging from quantum computing to helping us understand certain cosmological models."
So it should have been flux time crystals, not the flux capacitor...
Now, where's that Delorean???
http://www.timecube.com/
I'm pretty sure this is what the Power Rangers used to beat Lord Zedd.
I'm sure when I re-read it after smoking a couple of joints.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Wouldn't want any unforeseen consequences.
This is how it starts. First we get some time crystals, then the next thing you know some asshole is creating a race of genetically engineered aliens to destroy earth by manipulating the time stream.
If one reads the article, in the last paragraph the statement occurs: "Time crystals may sound dangerously close to a perpetual motion machine, but it is worth emphasizing one key difference: while time crystals would indeed move periodically in an eternal loop, rotation occurs in the ground state, with no work being carried out nor any usable energy being extracted from the system." They aren't proposing "mechanical perpetual motion" like we are probably all thinking at first glance. The crystal isn't doing anything abnormal. No energy is to be gained from the system, so at least mechanically, nothing is happening.
While time crystals remain theoretical, ....
So was the Higgs boson at one time.
Maybe they'll create or discover these in my lifetime.
Whoosh. That was the sound of the GP's sarcasm flying over your head.
Not that we're on topic or anything, but most of the money Romney donated to "charity" was to his church, which gives almost nothing to the poor, but spends an incredible amount of money to send their young members to knock on your door.
Think about that next time you answer the door and see them. Again.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Could the postulated cyclic evolution of the Universe be seen as a manifestation of spontaneous symmetry breaking akin to that of a time crystal? If so, who is the observer inducing--by a measurement--the breaking of the symmetry of time?
... have come up on my couch and eaten from my table?"
Salome?
Jesus said, "Two will rest on a bed: the one will die, and the other will live."
Salome said, "Who are you, man, that you
Jesus said to her, "I am he who exists from the undivided. I was given some of the things of my Father."
"I am your disciple."
"Therefore I say, if he is destroyed, he will be filled with light, but if he is divided, he will be filled with darkness."
--Thomas
Come on, you know a cat would be among the least-interesting things to have in the superposition box.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
A energy state about nothing.
Do these crystals have a cubic structure?
Maybe we were all educated stupid after all...
Rob
Well, I hope not.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It's where Krypton keeps their most dangerous criminals, duh!
why not build a time cube?
i know of a distinguished scientist who has spoken at numerous universities, including MIT, on his groundbreaking work in this area:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube#Public_reaction
note: if you visit http://timecube.com/ for the first time in a decade, like i just did, you discover that gene ray has been experimenting with javascript, but i don't think he got the effect he was looking for. i think he is trying to profit from clicks, but i think he mangled the code and you get a page redirect whenever you try to load his site. i guess deep knowledge of time cubez does not translate into mad html skillz
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
One key point that makes it not a free energy machine is that you can't actually read it or otherwise do anything useful with it (nor can it do anything) without spending extra external energy.
And in any normal situation, like sitting in a room on Earth, you might even have to spend energy keeping it undisturbed by things like thermal jostling (i.e., cooled to near absolute zero).
C'mon, this is old news, they had these on Land of the Lost.
http://www.tvacres.com/metals_pylons.htm
Stargate SG-1 called; they want their ZPM back.
What's hilarious is that blue states by and large subsidize red states. Hey Alabama, how do you like those roads and welfare California paid for? The political climate in this country is so screwy that you basically have one set of Americans (blue states) saying 'hey rural poor people we really want to help you out by paying taxes for basic needs like infrastructure and food' and red states saying 'damn communist let us live in third world conditions'. Well, it'd be hilarious if it wasn't so fucked up.
Back to the 70's, and ancient Atlantis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Monster
I was expecting to see the article authored by Rick Marshall.
it is a co-dimension.
if you don't understand the difference, go study
Somehow, that's what comes to mind when I think about this...
Of course the reality is that it requires some sort of symmetry breaking field (where the mathematics work out like an oscillating soliton).
The problem of course is that if such a minimum energy oscillating system existed, you would likely not be able to use it like a clock since once you attempted to measure it somehow, you would likely disturb in a way where it would no longer be accurate going forward.
Maybe this could be used in some weird thought experiment as a timer in along with Schrödinger's cat? If you look at the timer before it expires, the cat is dead, if you wait until the timer expires, the cat is alive, but if you don't look at the timer, the cat is still in a superposition between alive and dead? Okay, maybe that's just silly ;^)
There are Quasicrystals. These are ordered in space, but not periodic.
Who ordered that?
...they're gonna take all of our jobs!
Everyone knows the time crystals have a 4-sided shape.
It is commonly understood that crystals exist in a state of matter that is periodic in space.
If your Bullshit Detector didn't go off as soon you read this in the original post
Mine didn't. Does yours need calibration?
A crystal structure is composed of a pattern, a set of atoms arranged in a particular way, and a lattice exhibiting long-range order and symmetry. Patterns are located upon the points of a lattice, which is an array of points repeating periodically in three dimensions.
Periodicity is a well-defined concept.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Thiotimoline
There are Quasicrystals. These are ordered in space, but not periodic.
... hence the "quasi".
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
To charity? More than Mitt. Mitt donated to a big business that isn't a "charity" in any sense of the word, other than tax write off.
Learn to love Alaska
Alabama receives more for roads than Alabama pays for roads. Someone is subsidizing roads in AL. The fact your math is bad doesn't change the facts.
Learn to love Alaska
The "young members" pay for themselves to go door knocking.
Crystals really have amazing and out-of-this-world powers!
Now where is my mithra porn, damnit?
does transition form states of matter happen without energy ....remember that lil bit about "things like to do what they already are doing"
my bet is this will cost you more then its worth in terms of energy or devices we use now...and time is NOT a dimension
space-time is a dimension that we live in that has 3 dimensions, it can be curved and bent and theoretical pushed through , but it is not separate on its own or we'd have time travel both ways without issues. UGH where do we get these idiots and whose wasting money now.
http://taxfoundation.org/blog/why-do-some-states-feast-federal-spending-not-others
As for your disillusioned Obama comment... He wants to make people pay their fair share of taxes while Romney wants the middle class to "distribute" their wealth up the chain so it lands in some dudes bank account, not helping the economy at all. Spending money helps the economy, hoarding it doesn't.
One step closer to making myself a functional TARDIS...
... Obama wants to make you broker!
Hey - nobody makes us broker than Republicans!
http://www.poolepartners.com.au/images/stories/March_2012/Dow_Jones_Historical_Chart_5_Year.png
"Mormon fuck."
Of course, the intellectual capacity of the leftist drone on full display.
Thank you for proving my point.
You left out:
"...moron Mormon fuck."
Let's give him credit for cute alliteration.
Pretty sure they use this stuff in TARDISes.
Is it called chemistry?
Please before you repeat your misinformation, this is an article from a website called Philanthropy Round Table. The article is called
A Welfare System That Works
The Latter-day Saints are proving that private citizens can support a vast and effective social welfare system.
http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/topic/excellence_in_philanthropy/a_welfare_system_that_works
Please understand that we have very, very few employees. Almost all of the funds that go into the church go to buildings, the universities, missionary work and charity. It is a common misconception that many people repeat. I had a responsibility in our local congregation and I saw the checks coming in and out. We helped people with rent, electricity, water and medical bills. Some people went to what we call the "Bishop's storehouse" which is kind of like a grocery store where you don't pay for the food.
Seriously, before you say things about the LDS church, first check with a member first. We HAVE to tell you the truth. If we lie, we go to hell. : )
LDS church. Missionaries are mostly self funded. Also, the church has a well recognized welfare system. In fact, there was just an article about the LDS charitable system in a website called "Philanthropy Roundtable"
A Welfare System That Works
The Latter-day Saints are proving that private citizens can support a vast and effective social welfare system.
http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/topic/excellence_in_philanthropy/a_welfare_system_that_works
The LDS church doesn't have a professional clergy, and in fact has relatively few employees. Most of the funds go to buildings, the universities, and charities. Before repeating the common misconception that the LDS church doesn't act as a charity, you should ask a Mormon first.
Careful. You've just conflated mathematical periodicity with physical periodicity. They're not the same thing.
A periodic mathematical function repeats infinitely: f(n) = f(n + T); therefore \forall n,k f(n) = f(n + k*T).
A periodic physical property has discrete elements that obey the periodic relationship, but there is no implied induction / infinite continuation.
Any proof that attempts to use the mathematical concept cannot be applied to physical reality without very strong additional proof that the property holds.
It should be obvious that these would be identical in every way to what is known as "resonance".
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
the interesting bit, at the end, is about how this type of thinking makes a cyclic universe seem explainable as a time crystal, which i mean to take as a no-energy gain or loss ground state oscillating between it's states. but it was pretty hard making that sort of assumption, myself. i wonder what they see about that that fits our model so well; perhaps just because we have some math for it, being the universal language, pun intended.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
It occurs to me ... how large are normal crystals? Has anyone ever heard of a crystal a light-second across? If the size of a time crystal corresponds to the size of normal crystals ... picoseconds? Not very practical.
Electrons are perpetual motion around nuclear. I think we can make a perpetual machine by harvesting universal expansion.
I started reading and just stopped after the first paragraph:
"Spontaneous symmetry breaking is ubiquitous in nature. It occurs when the ground state (classically, the lowest energy state) of a system is less symmetrical than the equations governing the system. Examples in which the symmetry is broken in excited states are common—one just needs to think of Kepler’s elliptical orbits, which break the spherical symmetry of the gravitational force"
Can someone educate me, as this appears to be cargo science:
- How can an "energy state be less symmetrical then the equation for the system". Seems wrong semantically, mathematically and physically?
- How can on state that "elliptical orbits break the spherical symmetry of the gravitational force". How can a simple principle be misunderstood with such pompous nonsense?
- and is the ground state *not* the lowest enerygy state in quantum mechanics as implied in first sentence?
It only gets worse from there.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Cargo cult science
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
some think time isnthe fourth dimension..
for others, the Fourth Dimension is Heat!!
2cents
jp
Relativistic physics can tell us whatever it likes, but it's quite obvious that time isn't a physical dimension and it's in no way similar to the spatial dimensions. You can move through the spatial dimensions, because all points (x, y, and z) actually exist. But only the present exists in time - everything else either has gone and doesn't exist any more or hasn't come yet and doesn't exist yet. It may all look similar mathematically, but in reality it isn't. And nobody will ever prove otherwise.
"Mormon fuck."
Of course, the intellectual capacity of the leftist drone on full display.
Thank you for proving my point.
If being against a stupid recently-made-up religion is leftist, why would you want to be rightist?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
... bank account, not helping the economy at all.
Money in a bank account does help the economy. It provides banks with more funds, which allows them to make more loans and reduce interest rates, allowing business to invest more.
Of course, what that leaves out is that while consumer spending has reached pre-recession levels, business-investment spending is about $150B lower than 2008, and banks have plenty of funds (exceeding their funding requirements). In fact, business investment is the one area of the economy that has not recovered to pre-2008 levels.
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/07/the-mission-1-4-trillion-one-chart-that-says-u-s-business-investment-isnt-doing-fine/
So for whatever reason (banks not making loans, or businesses not wanting to invest, or inadequate investment opportunities, etc), in effect you are right.
Good news everyone!
UK (University of Kentucky) does have smart people!
I think I watch too much Futurama.
So much BS. Can't breathe.
Oh and hey! +5 insightful too. Shocking.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Seems like this is a description of Star Trek's "dilithium."
How typical. Leftist: Everyone should be treated equally and be accepted by society! Except any religious people. Nice hypocrisy, man.
Is it April Fools in October?
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
I have first hand knowledge of this, as I saw the checks and food orders* that went out and went personally with our Bishop at times. We almost never just hand people money but rather pay for bills and rent. But, since you can never believe random people on Slashdot, according to that article I linked to:
"That spirit of generosity funds a vast private welfare system, one that serves hundreds of thousands of people each year. This welfare system serves mostly—but not exclusively—fellow Latter-day Saints who are in need. It is intended for people who have lost their jobs, who have been injured, or whose families are going through some other kind of hardship. Self-sufficiency is at the heart of its mission—both for the givers and receivers."
In essence, Mormons believe that if you are going to call yourself a Christian, you must follow His example. Giving of yourself, your time and your resources to "mourn with those that mourn and comfort those in need of comfort" is central. The Book of Mormon is very explicit about this need of helping the poor.
By the way, thank you for the respectful way that you asked your question. Most of the time we don't get that, and it never hurts to ask an honest question. There are some people who dislike our church for various reasons and spread FUD whenever they can. I will never mock atheists for what they believe, because at one point in my life I pretty much was an atheist. I can see how one could arrive at that conclusion. If you are curious, prayer brought me back.
* Food orders come from the Bishop's Storehouse. Basically after you speak to the Bishop, you then speak to a woman who represents what we call the Relief Society. She talks with you about your needs, and fills out a form indicating that you need, say, five pounds of fruit, two loaves of bread, a Turkey, 10 cans of soup, a jar of peanut butter, two cans of peaches, a broom, diapers, etc., then you go to the Bishop's Storehouse where a volunteer helps you fill out your order. No money is exchanged. If you look at the picture in the article, you will see President Reagan talking with two men. One of the men is former LDS Leader Gordon B. Hinkley. Anyway, there is a sign behind them that says "Deseret The Brand Money Can't Buy"
The submitter obviously hasn't heard of PYRAMID POWER! I said "PYRAMID POWER"!! Yeah. Never mind. I thought it would work, but that was pretty dumb. PYRAMID POWER-R-R-R-R-R-R-R!!!
If one considers the
Golden Rule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule
the
Allegory of the Long Spoons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_long_spoons
and
Obama's "We're All In This Together"
vs.
Romney's "You're On Your Own" visions for America,
it becomes quite clear that Romney would lead us down the road to Hell.
...on ebay didn't work! I forgot to add the time crystals!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
The Shrike comes.
Nice rebuttal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-time_crystal
Parent has been modded down to zero, but he does actually make a point: your tolerance only exists as far as it exists towards the person with whom you disagree the most. While it is an over-generalisation, there are quite a few people who express the view "be tolerant(tm) to everyone except if I think they're intolerant." To again somewhat over-generalise, this view seems to me to be more common in those who are "leftist" than others (YMMV).
(I put the sarcastic "(tm)" in there because "tolerance" has been taken recently to mean "don't say anything that might offend someone", whereas it actually - or used to - mean "being able to respectfully disagree"; tolerance only starts when you disagree).
An important thing to note is that while periodic they are still finite; the periodicity ends at the edge of the crystal.
Not a sentence!
I have personally seen non-believers receive assistance. Like I said, I was the Ward Clerk, so I saw the financial records at the congregational level. We support local food banks and national and international relief organizations. The idea is to build self-sufficiency. Once you are on a stable spiritual and financial footing then it is your duty to help others. Again, you don't have to be a member. I know that if, (for example) you are looking for a job, then after you speak to your local Bishop then you can get a reference to a job bank. It is staffed by volunteers. The vast majority of work in our church is done by volunteers.
Look, I know that we have a weird image. Part of that is our fault*, but mostly it is because some people want others to think that we are this way. They are very vocal, and want to embarrass the church in any way possible. I don't know if you are aware of some of the weird stuff that goes on but when I was a child my parents took me to the Seattle Temple open house and protesters were hanging two former LDS leaders (Joseph Smith and Spencer W. Kimball) in effigy across the street at a fire station. There is a wall around the temple in Salt Lake, and it is customary for newlyweds to have their pictures taken on the steps. There are some religious groups that actually protested someone's wedding and screamed obscenities. I remember walking to our General Conference at Salt Lake City when a group of people were beating drums outside the walls. I've heard all sorts of things about my religion that if I didn't know the truth would scare me to death. But I know what really goes on, and so it just becomes an annoyance. As for "gay rights", the church leadership supports homosexual civil unions, just not calling it marriage. In the same vein, you can believe me or not, but we don't sit around much and talk about gay marriage. A little, but not much. We are pretty busy with other things.
*For example members in good standing don't do illegal drugs, drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, or drink tea and coffee. While I don't consume any of those things, they don't define my faith. I often tell other members, "if we are known as 'the church that doesn't drink coffee' then we aren't doing our jobs very well." Instead we should be known for honesty, integrity, charity, kindness, helpfulness and love. Sometimes we do a better job than others.
LDS Welfare is intended to be a temporary thing. It is at the discretion of the Bishop how long to continue, or under what conditions they are to continue. Sometimes the length of the help is a one day thing (like helping a transient get out of the cold, a change of clothes and a shower and bed for the night) or long term help for rent. The intent is to get the person back into a position where they can work. Sometimes there is the expectation that they are supposed to volunteer somewhere, like move boxes at the Bishop's Storehouse. Sometimes there isn't. Like I said, it is up to the discretion of the Bishop.