Natalie Wolchover:

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” — physical structures that move in a repeating pattern, like minute hands rounding clocks, without expending energy or ever winding down. Unlike clocks or any other known objects, time crystals derive their movement not from stored energy but from a break in the symmetry of time, enabling a special form of perpetual motion.

If real, filed under: mind blown.

Proposed four dimensional crystal clock could theoretically outlast the universe itself

The problem with thinking about the improbability of a perpetual motion machine is that regardless of how clever you think you are, forever is forever, meaning even our own universe will one day, a long time from now, completely run out of energy and will die. This situation is known as the heat death of the universe, and at that point, nothing will be left. Except perhaps this clock…

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