Incredibly, but the very existence of such crystals breaks some of the fundamental physical laws, which causes a number of exotic effects. For example, a clock built on the basis of such a crystal can "tick" even after the death of the Universe, at time when all the movement stops and time, according to some scientists, will simply stop.
In 2012, a scientist Frank Wilczek suggested that, under certain conditions, it is possible to force some physical repeating structure to move indefinitely without spending any energy. Later, a group of researchers from Berkeley, embodied the idea of Frank Wilkesek in the form of a constantly rotating circle consisting of charged ions. It should be noted that the problem hiding in this approach was pointed out by the physicist Patrick Bruno, who published an interesting article in the journal Physical Review Letters. It notes that in order to become a real spatiotemporal crystal, the object has to move, which can lose some of its energy under some conditions and, therefore, can not be considered a spatiotemporal crystal.
Researchers from Berkeley found a way to overcome the above problem. Using their latest achievements in the field of creating low-noise ion traps, they created an ion trap in which they obtained a real spatiotemporal crystal, the characteristics of which meet all the requirements. Their work, published in the online publishing company ArXiv, describes this crystal as a device based on an ion trap with an electric field that uses the Coulomb law to form a spatial annular "crystal". This structure under a single action of a weak magnetic field begins to rotate slowly and in theory it will never stop, even when the Universe "stops."
The spatiotemporal crystal is a quantum annular system consisting of ytterbium atoms, which can rotate in two directions, up or down. Using laser light, scientists controlled the direction of ions rotation in one of the halves of a circular chain. The rotation of each ion affects neighboring ions and such time for the initial state is exactly twice as long as the time spent by the ion on the path from the notional start of the circle to the point of its "turning over".
The experiments established that the ions always return to the original orientation of their rotation direction at the same speed, which does not depend on the moment of time and the point of space. That in turn indicates that the quantum system reacts in a strictly defined way to "disturbances" in its state. And all this is very similar to the behavior of atoms in the crystal lattice of the crystal, which are shifted from their place under some external influence.
For physicists such a revolution in science is of great importance because the existence of such a crystal violates the fundamental physical concept - symmetry.
Mankind can get a unique quantum instrument at its disposal, on the basis of which it will be possible to create so accurate clock, in comparison with which a modern atomic clock will look like a child's alarm clock. This technology can be used in teleportation, because the time "here" and the time "there" will be accurate,computers and other similar devices.
It is likely that further research will lead to the identification of some completely different laws of physics and quantum mechanics, on the basis of which it will be possible to create technologies that are now considered to be a science fiction.