“Time Crystals”: DARPA Performs Classified Research on Strange Objects

Remember DARPA? The “mad science division” of the Pentagon tasked with creating such things as self guided bullets, slower deaths, and faster learning, now they are trying to crack quantum physics to capitalize on the rules of reality itself.

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As DARPA periodically announces its projects, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency recently announced that it is going to fund research into a very strange scientific discovery that was widely reported last year: “time crystals.”

Last year it was reported that four years after time crystals were a mere hypothetical suggestion, they were literally created in the setting of a laboratory by scientists.

A past article we published reads:

“Theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek proposed that it may be possible to make an object enter an asymmetrical ground state not across space, as in crystals repeating their pattern, but.. as inconceivable as this sounds, across time. Isn’t space time incredibly difficult to comprehend?

Wilczek believes an object can achieve everlasting movement while in it’s ground state by occasionally switching between states of matter, repeatedly.

He proposed that an object like this could be made by placing regular crystals in a low temperature superconductor (because crystals align themselves at low temperatures).”

Time crystals are essentially pieces of matter composed of atoms with constantly oscillating spins that behave very differently from the normal laws of physics. These particular atoms are said to sort of jiggle or flip flop when in the presence of some regular force, like an electric field that causes the oscillation to continue without end. They say it’s akin to some gelatin-like substance wobbling when moved.

What is strange about this oscillation is the fact that it is inconsistent with the different factors causing it: it doesn’t always line up with the “tick of the field,” presumably they mean an electric field, that can cause the oscillation.

These objects created in a lab last year reportedly flipped merely half as fast as the cause of the motion, a baffling inconsistency in the laws of known physics.

Norman Yao of UC Berkeley said:

“Wouldn’t it be super weird if you jiggled the Jell-O and found that somehow it responded at a different period?”

Yao was a researcher involved with this discovery.

So why does the dangerous-technology-producing division of the military want to investigate quantum physics anomalies in the form of “time crystals?” We aren’t allowed to know. That’s not a good sign.

They will explain away the questions to the best of their strategic ability. A DARPA program manager said little: “There might be applications related to measuring things with exquisite sensitivity in time and magnetic field domains,” Ale Lukaszew said.

“Not a lot of these applications are open for discussion.”

The only thing the official DARPA announcement will admit is the fact that an area of focus they allegedly have on the project is how the use of time crystals might improve the precision of measurements when it pertains to atomic clocks.

Apparently a sensitive enough clock could detect and measure extremely minute changes in gravitational or magnetic fields. A variety of applications could result from this, possibly for sensing hidden cavities or tunnels beneath the Earth. However, Earth might be a worse place if technology could locate any tunnel or hidden enclosure anywhere. It is probably already possible.

Atomic clocks with absurd precision already exist, but if you’re familiar with the demanding requirements for nuclear power, constantly cooling things and isolating the reaction, practicality is not a benefit of that technology.

According to Science Alert:

“The discovery of time crystals kicked off research into the existence of quantum systems that become more stable and coherent with the addition of a ‘tick’ from an external pulse. These are known as non-equilibrium systems, and time crystals were one of the first examples we’ve ever discovered.

However, it’s highly likely that there are a lot more of these non-equilibrium systems out there – systems that become more coherent and more resistant to outside influence with just a little external push.”

DARPA calls their project the Driven and Non-equilibrium Quantum Systems (DRINQS). The press release reports their overt goal is “to yield 10- to 100-fold performance improvement for defense-related sensors and devices.”

“A simple illustration of the concept of driving something out of equilibrium to increase its stability is the well-known trick of making an inverted broom stand up on the palm of your hand or on one of your fingertips,” said Lukaszew the DARPA employee.

“If you hold your hand still, the broom is unstable and will fall over quickly. But if you drive the broom out of equilibrium by moving your hand around periodically, you can make the broom very stable, so it remains upright indefinitely.”

It might look something like this.

Image credit: Darpa. ScienceAlert

Everyone should probably remember to dish out their trust scarcely when it comes to strange new technology. People would be wise to consider, what do we really need and what risks should we really take proceeding forward in this 21st Century?

Image credit: ScienceAlert, Fullhdwpp