Scientists unveil new form of matter: Time crystals

> Niels Bohr proposed that electrons don't have enough energy to radiate away, and thus are forced to continue to spin around the nucleus.[0] This was the seed that fruited the quantization of energy and eventually our modern understanding of Quantum Mechanics.

The first sentence is correct, though the history directly begins in 1900 with Planck's quantization hypothesis in the context of black body radiation. Bohr's paper, which I assume you're referring to, came in 1913.

> In a way, the quantization of reality at very small scales does appear to prevent the laws of thermodynamics from occurring. This is just one form of Zero-Point Energy[1]. Maybe these time crystals are another form - maybe some large objects radiate some kind of time-entropy, and these are too small (or configured in some other way), such that they are also mechanically prevented from doing so?

I do to take an issue with this paragraph, in that it doesn't really map to any well defined concepts in modern physics. The "quantization of reality at very small scales" (by which I assume you're referring to the speculative idea of fundamentally quantized spacetime) doesn't really have anything directly to do with thermodynamics - the laws of thermodynamics are necessarily statistical laws, produced by the behavior of ensembles defined by particular distributions. They have no particular validity in (most) very small scale systems and I don't see how the quantization is relevant here. Nor do any of these remarks help you violate the conservation of energy with respect to any larger systems.

I have no idea what "time-entropy" means, but generally speaking this notion of time crystals doesn't have anything intrinsically to do with violating energy conservation or producing useful work (in the physical sense) in any new fashion. Rather, it represents a fairly ingenious way of applying the established mathematical tools of analyzing symmetries to systems that exhibit complex periodic behavior rather than just spatial symmetries. In that regard, I think the example of satellite motion presented by Latham Boyle [1] was very illustrative without being misleading or overly suggestive.

I hope this response isn't overly snarky, I just wanted to clarify a few misconceptions I've seen a lot in the last few days.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1407.5876

This is the fundamental reason why electrons can't orbit the nucleus in a classical sense (and why we know the Bohr model is incorrect). The atom is a quantum object and as such it does not behave in a classical manner. You can describe it heuristically as an electron 'orbiting' the nucleus but that is not what's actually happening. The very concept of a path or trajectory does not have any meaning for quantum objects, which exist in probabilistic quantum states.

Norman Margolus [3] invented the Margolus Neighborhood [4], which is useful for rotationally symmetrical cellular automata rules [5] like billiard ball cellular automata [6] [7].

Toffoli and Margolus also explored other energy conserving cellular automata like spin glasses [8], which are disordered magnets that store energy in the bonds between atoms.

Edward Fredkin [9] invented reversible second order cellular automata [10], which look back two steps in time, and are useful for simulating the Ising model of ferromagnetism.

Then again, maybe Otis Eugene "Gene" Ray, the "wisest man on earth", caused this article to quantum tunnel through time from April 1 1997 [11] [12].

To play with the following code that implements a spin glass, go here: http://donhopkins.com/home/CAM6/ then click the square in the upper left, click "Rules", pick the rule "von Neumann Spins Only", and draw in the cells by dragging around with the left button. JavaScript sure cooks these days!

    // ruleFunction_VonNeumann_spinsOnly computes the Spins Only rule
    // for VonNeumann neighborhood lookup table.
    //
    // Cellular Automata Machines, p. 190, section 17.3, Spins Only.
    //
    // This models a spin glass, which is a matrix of atoms with
    // magnetic spins (up or down).
    //
    // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_glass
    //
    // A spin glass is a disordered magnet with frustrated
    // interactions, augmented by stochastic positions of the spins,
    // where conflicting interactions, namely both ferromagnetic and
    // also antiferromagnetic bonds, are randomly distributed with
    // comparable frequency. The term "glass" comes from an analogy
    // between the magnetic disorder in a spin glass and the
    // positional disorder of a conventional, chemical glass, e.g.,
    // a window glass.
    //
    // Spin glasses display many metastable structures, leading to a
    // plenitude of time scales which are difficult to explore
    // experimentally or in simulations.
    //
    function ruleFunction_VonNeumann_spinsOnly(ruleDict, state) {

        // This makes a checkerboard pattern that alternates every
        // step, so we can apply the rule to every other cell every
        // other step. That way we know our four neighbors will not be
        // changing at the same time we are changing.
        var activeSite =
            (state.horiz ^ state.phaseTime) == state.vert;

        // Count how many of our four neighbors are set.
        var sum4 =
                 state.n0 +
            state.w0 + state.e0 +
                 state.s0;

        // When it is our turn to run in this cell (at every other
        // step), then we flip our value if exactly two of our
        // neighbors are up, and two are down. Since energy is stored
        // in two adjacent cells with different spins, we can flip our
        // value without changing the energy of the system, because
        // the perimeter between up and down cells remains the same.
        var result =
            (activeSite
                ? [
                    state.c0,
                    state.c0,
                    state.c0 ^ 1,
                    state.c0,
                    state.c0
                  ][sum4]
               : state.c0);

        return result;
    }

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toffoli_gate

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Margolus

[4] https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM...

[5] https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_cellular_automaton#...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billiard-ball_computer

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_glass

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_cellular_automato...

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube

[12] https://web.archive.org/web/19980629180418/http://www.timecu...

But according to some crummy philosophy, time as phenomena does not exist, because it requires an observer.

The simplest example would be how life (at the level of molecular biology, proteins) uses only pattern-matching but no counting, binding-sites and concentration-based regulations, but no counters. Never. Because a counting requires an observer. But molecular biology precedes any consciousness, so, no counting or numbers. Only pattern matching of physical shapes, compound structures. (Precedes here means that in a whole process of evolution of life it some patterns emerged prior to others).

Same holds for time. The notion of time, like counting, requires a consciousness. Like any other abstraction.

But, of course, who studies philosophy in the age of hipsters? So lets ask a much simpler question: what exactly replicable experiment proves the existence of time as an independent phenomena (independent of any physical process, the phenomena-in-itself), so any goddamn crystals could exist?