Time crystals and perpetual motion

A Nobel Prize-winning physicist has devised the concept of a mysterious structure called a time crystal.

Frank Wilczek is well known for developing exotic theories that later turn out to be true yet despite this there was considerable skepticism among physicists at the revelation of his latest idea. Time crystals, he proposed, were structures that move in a repeating pattern like the hands on a clock, never expending any energy and never winding down. Unlike conventional objects, these crystals got their energy from a break in the symmetry of time - essentially enabling them to facilitate perpetual motion.

"I was thinking about the classification of crystals, and then it just occurred to me that it’s natural to think about space and time together," said Wilczek. "So if you think about crystals in space, it’s very natural also to think about the classification of crystalline behavior in time."

In February 2012, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek decided to go public with a strange and, he worried, somewhat embarrassing idea. Impossible as it seemed, Wilczek had developed an apparent proof of “time crystals”.