Google believes it will create a time crystal within a quantum computer

Google, Stanford, Princeton, and other universities researchers may have made a momentous computer breakthrough that we are only now beginning to appreciate. Even Google’s researchers are skeptical of their time crystal discovery. However, if the report is accurate, Google might be one of the first companies to present the world with a vital technological advancement in the future. Time crystals will be an essential component of quantum computers, which will be able to solve complex problems at previously unimagined rates and with previously unimagined power approaches.

Time crystals take advantage of a physics quirk that allows them to be ever-changing while remaining dynamically stable. In other words, they do not emit energy when they change conformation, indicating a clear breach of the natural rule that all things gradually decay into entropy and disorder.

Crystal Computing
The time crystal concept, first proposed in 2012, is a new phase of matter. According to The Next Web, time crystals violate one of Sir Isaac Newton’s most renowned laws. According to Newton’s first law of motion, “an object at rest tends to remain at rest, whereas an object in motion tends to remain in motion.”

There is something in our cosmos known as high entropy (disorder). Energy exchanges always result in something. Entropy remains constant in the absence of processes but increases when they exist. However, this is not true for time crystals. Even when they are used in a process, they can sustain entropy.

The Next Web makes an excellent analogy using snowflakes to help explain Google’s time crystals. They are one-of-a-kind in appearance due to the way the atoms are organised. Snow falls, melts, and the water evaporates, eventually reverting to snow. Each of these processes entails an exchange of energy. A time crystal is analogous to a snowflake that can alternate between two configurations without consuming or losing energy. Time crystals are capable of having their cake and eating it as well, and they can do so indefinitely.

Google does not own the time crystals. Even the Google team is unsure whether they were generated by the company. The research is only available in pre-print form while it awaits peer review.

However, if Google does discover a technique to manufacture them, next-generation quantum computers may include time crystals. Anyone may be capable of developing these machines. And they’d restore quantum coherence to a region rife with decoherence — the restless qubits from earlier.

Nonetheless, we are in the very early stages of developing quantum computers using time crystals. Google may have established that time crystals are not merely theoretical, but it has not made any.

Decades of quantum computing research may be required to develop quantum computers equipped with time crystals for the purpose of developing warp drives or discovering “universally effective cancer cures.” And it will surely take decades to fully comprehend quantum computers and time crystals. This link will take you to Google’s document.

Reference
Mi, X., Ippoliti, M., Quintana, C., Greene, A., Chen, Z., Gross, J., … & Chen, Y. (2021). Observation of Time-Crystalline Eigenstate Order on a Quantum Processor. arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.13571.