Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has conceived of how to make one a reality. "The idea of creating a crystal with dimensions higher than that of conventional 3D crystals is an important conceptual , and it is very exciting for us to be the first to devise a way to realize a space-time crystal," Berkeley Lab physicist Tongcang Li, a member of the research group, said in a statement. [] Zhang and his colleagues suggest that a space-time crystal could be constructed using an electric field to trap charged atoms (called ions), and taking advantage of the natural repulsion between two like-charged particles (positive and positive, or negative and negative), which is called Coulomb repulsion. "The electric of the ion trap holds charged particles in place and Coulomb repulsion causes them to spontaneously form a spatial ring crystal," Zhang said. "Under the application of a weak static magnetic field, this ring-shaped ion crystal will begin a rotation that will never stop. The persistent rotation of trapped ions produces temporal order, leading to the formation of a crystal at the lowest quantum energy state." In other words, the scientists would aim to create a ring of charged particles, with the resulting electromagnetic forces causing the structure to rotate perpetually. At its lowest quantum-energy state, also known as its ground state, the system has no disorder, or entropy, and there is no way for its entropy to increase over time. Thus, the crystal's temporal structure and timekeeping ability would continue even after the universe reached a state of "," also known as thermodynamic equilibrium, when it had devolved into entropy I am very pleased by their finding because it is fully in line with the hypothesis that Nobel laureate Francis Crick and I advanced in 1995. Writing in Nature, we had argued that neurons in V1 do not directly contribute to visual consciousness. Our speculation was based on the absence of a direct connection between cells in V1 and their partners in the frontal lobe in macaques. The fMRI experiment described here provided evidence for our conjecture. Whether or not our connectional argument is valid remains open, of course. It appears that the habitat of consciousness is not the cortical region at the bottom of the extended hierarchy of cortical areas dedicated to vision. Consciousness is restricted to higher
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has conceived of how to make one a reality. "The idea of creating a crystal with dimensions higher than that of conventional 3D crystals is an important conceptual , and it is very exciting for us to be the first to devise a way to realize a space-time crystal," Berkeley Lab physicist Tongcang Li, a member of the research group, said in a statement. [] Zhang and his colleagues suggest that a space-time crystal could be constructed using an electric field to trap charged atoms (called ions), and taking advantage of the natural repulsion between two like-charged particles (positive and positive, or negative and negative), which is called Coulomb repulsion. "The electric of the ion trap holds charged particles in place and Coulomb repulsion causes them to spontaneously form a spatial ring crystal," Zhang said. "Under the application of a weak static magnetic field, this ring-shaped ion crystal will begin a rotation that will never stop. The persistent rotation of trapped ions produces temporal order, leading to the formation of a crystal at the lowest quantum energy state." In other words, the scientists would aim to create a ring of charged particles, with the resulting electromagnetic forces causing the structure to rotate perpetually. At its lowest quantum-energy state, also known as its ground state, the system has no disorder, or entropy, and there is no way for its entropy to increase over time. Thus, the crystal's temporal structure and timekeeping ability would continue even after the universe reached a state of "," also known as thermodynamic equilibrium, when it had devolved into entropy I am very pleased by their finding because it is fully in line with the hypothesis that Nobel laureate Francis Crick and I advanced in 1995. Writing in Nature, we had argued that neurons in V1 do not directly contribute to visual consciousness. Our speculation was based on the absence of a direct connection between cells in V1 and their partners in the frontal lobe in macaques. The fMRI experiment described here provided evidence for our conjecture. Whether or not our connectional argument is valid remains open, of course. It appears that the habitat of consciousness is not the cortical region at the bottom of the extended hierarchy of cortical areas dedicated to vision. Consciousness is restricted to higher
X2-Radio_2012-9-30.docx