A research team from Hiroshima University, the University of Colorado, and other collaborators have demonstrated that space-time crystals—exotic structures that, under external drive, loop endlessly through both space and time—can be created using everyday liquid-crystal materials.
For the past decade, physicists have been fascinated by time crystals. Unlike normal crystals (such as salt or diamonds), which have repeating molecular patterns in space, time crystals have patterns that repeat at regular intervals in time. Previously, scientists believed these bizarre structures could exist only in highly complex, fragile quantum systems at near-absolute-zero temperatures, such as trapped ions or quantum simulators. However, in a collaborative study published in Nature Communications, researchers successfully created them in a classical, room-temperature liquid-crystal system.
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