Good Vibrations: UMW Summer Science Institute Highlights Intense Undergrad Research - University of Mary Washington

A colourful pattern formed by vibrations in a liquid, illustrating how waves can create intricate, organized structures. (Xvision/Moment/Getty Images) To us mortals, the flow of time goes one way. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is yet to come, and no matter how precisely and faithfully a clock marks the passing seconds, we can never return to a moment that has passed. But for a time crystal, things are very different. The constituent ranks of this mysterious state of matter – be they atoms, sound waves, or topological defects – are strictly regimented in time, a repeating pattern of beats that could be snipped from a recording at regular intervals and perfectly superimposed, one over another. Once thought impossible, time crystals have been observed in systems from physical atomic lattices to levitating styrofoam. Now, physicists have discovered a strange new way for a time crystal to emerge – not through the imposition of an external rhythm, but through a spontaneous process in which competing vibrations gradually fall into step – order gradually emerging from chaos.