- 9 hours ago
Discover the incredible science behind tiny crystals that could change everything - from powering the planet to revolutionizing technology. Explore how Moon crystals and quantum breakthroughs might shape our future. Animation is created by Bright Side.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en
Stock materials (photos, footages and other):
https://www.depositphotos.com
https://www.shutterstock.com
https://www.eastnews.ru
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en
Stock materials (photos, footages and other):
https://www.depositphotos.com
https://www.shutterstock.com
https://www.eastnews.ru
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:01Inside a chunk of diamond smaller than your fingernail, scientists have just discovered something that shouldn't exist.
00:08Not just a new material, a new phase of matter. And it breaks the very rules of time itself.
00:15The biggest problem is, no one fully understands how it works yet. Not even the people who made it.
00:21So, let's take a peek and try to figure it out.
00:25The story started over a decade ago. Scientists created the first time crystal.
00:30Sounds like some mysterious component for a time machine, but it's something even weirder.
00:37Take a regular crystal and check it out under a microscope.
00:41Like everything around us, it consists of molecules and atoms.
00:45What makes crystals special is that their atoms are arranged in a repeating pattern.
00:50A salt crystal, for example. If we look at it, we'll see a repeating pattern inside it.
00:55And this pattern is the same everywhere, no matter how large or small the piece of salt is, or what
01:01shape it is.
01:03In the whole crystal, it's unchanged. And it will remain the same no matter how much time has passed.
01:10You might also know that all the atoms around us are constantly moving.
01:14Even at very, very low temperatures, when everything freezes and nothing can stop them.
01:20Their movement is random, chaotic, and unpredictable.
01:23They're just jiggling in space.
01:25But time crystals have their own special quirk.
01:29Not only are their atoms arranged in the same pattern, just like regular crystals,
01:34but these atoms also move in a looped, endlessly repeating dance.
01:39It's super weird.
01:41The atoms in time crystals are like an endless dance party.
01:44All the guests repeat the same moves in the same order over and over again.
01:49The movements in these dances can be basic and simple, or overly complex and chaotic.
01:56But they're always looped in time, hence the name.
02:00Now, just to clarify, these crystals aren't the kind we're used to.
02:04They don't look like gems, diamonds, emeralds, or anything like that.
02:08Actually, they don't look like much at all.
02:11The beautiful name, time crystal, describes a new, very strange kind of matter.
02:16The changes in quantum states, which is what we call the weirdly looped dancing atoms.
02:23But even after scientists discovered them, there was something even crazier about them.
02:27These dance movements, for some reason, persist, even at absolute zero temperature.
02:33In all normal materials and objects, if we cool atoms down to such a crazy degree, they would freeze, lose
02:40energy, and stop moving.
02:42In time crystals, they continue their endless dance as if nothing happened.
02:48Oh, and that was only the beginning.
02:51Scientists also got stunned because the existence of time crystals seemed to violate the second law of thermodynamics.
02:58Now, this law states that over time, any system becomes random and distorted.
03:03For example, a warm coffee will distribute its heat and become cold.
03:08Ice dropped in the water will eventually melt and unite with it, making water colder, and so on.
03:14At first, they thought that time crystals broke this law, because it seemed like their atoms can move indefinitely, like
03:21a perpetual motion machine.
03:23It seemed like not only do they move constantly, in the same pattern, no matter what happens to them, but
03:29they don't need any energy to do so.
03:32But then, it turned out that they do require energy after all, either from lasers or magnetic fields.
03:38So even though they're little marvels, they don't break our physics laws.
03:43Um, yet.
03:44There were theories that this stuff could exist.
03:47Time crystals were first predicted in 2012 by a theoretical physicist, Frank Wilczek.
03:53Not all physicists accepted the theory at the time.
03:56Many believed that the crystals would violate the second law of thermodynamics, which means breaking physics.
04:02But the universe really doesn't care what scientists think, and Frank Wilczek won a Nobel Prize for one of his
04:09works.
04:09Still, some scientists were skeptical about this, until time crystals were invented for the first time in 2016.
04:18Research from the University of Maryland managed to create one.
04:21They did it like this.
04:23First, they took a regular crystal and cooled down the atoms inside it to near absolute zero, almost stopping them.
04:30Then, they started shocking these atoms with lasers.
04:33It made the atoms switch between different states repeatedly without absorbing any energy from the laser.
04:39You could say that the laser gave them a beat and made them dance by themselves, without anyone's help.
04:46The result was the first time crystal ever.
04:49This was an amazing breakthrough.
04:52And ever since then, physicists kept studying time crystals to see what else these guys could do.
04:58The biggest problem was that such perpetual motion only truly exists forever in ideal time crystals.
05:05And since the time crystals in our experiments weren't ideal,
05:08they lasted only a few minutes before they melted and started behaving like regular matter again.
05:14But that didn't stop scientists.
05:16They wanted to make time crystals stable and usable.
05:20In 2021, they made another breakthrough.
05:23Researchers at Google collaborated with a bunch of big universities
05:27and used Google's quantum computer to create a much bigger and much more stable time crystal.
05:33If we managed to implement this property,
05:35these crystals could help us get closer to full-fledged usable quantum computers.
05:41One of the biggest problems for this technology was memory.
05:44But the loop dances in time crystals might help us store information on a quantum level.
05:51That would be absolutely insane.
05:54Now, another thing scientists aimed at was a new kind of ultra-precise clock.
05:59Time crystals could also help us with that.
06:02And now, in 2025, they finally achieved big new successes.
06:06They took time crystals even further and created a time quasi-crystal.
06:12It's like the jazz version of a time crystal.
06:15More complex, a bit more chaotic, yet still coherent and weirdly beautiful.
06:20A team led by the researcher Chong Zhu created an atoms dance that was based on the golden ratio.
06:27The same perfect number we see in nature in seashell spirals and sunflowers.
06:33In most time crystals, Adam danced to a simple beat, like tick-tock, tick-tock.
06:38In time quasi-crystals, they gave these guys a melody in Phrygian scale over a Fibonacci-timed beat.
06:46In simple words, their movements became complex, not looping anymore.
06:51Yet it still feels like actual structured dance, not random noise.
06:55Like a mosaic where no tiles repeat exactly, but still form a wonderful pattern.
07:01They started with a tiny chunk of diamond.
07:04Then they started hitting it with high-energy nitrogen atoms, knocking some of the diamond's carbon atoms out of place.
07:10That left behind empty pockets.
07:12Electrons rushed in to fill them, creating little quantum systems inside the diamond.
07:18Each of these pockets was highly microscopic, and the final system had over a million of them interacting together.
07:26Then came the microwaves.
07:28Using the magic of two overlapping pulses and golden ratio,
07:32they stirred the quantum particles into this bizarre, orderly, not-looped time rhythm.
07:37And just like that, the time quasi-crystal was born.
07:42What they got was a stable, non-repeating, atomic rhythm in time.
07:47Something that, mathematically speaking, shouldn't be possible.
07:50And it's an entirely new phase of matter.
07:54So this isn't just a cool physics trick.
07:57It's a doorway into a part of the quantum world we barely understand.
08:02Normally, when you pump energy into a system, it either settles into a pattern or falls apart in chaos.
08:08But this one didn't either.
08:10It found a new kind of order.
08:13But more than that, it might unlock technologies we haven't even dreamed of yet.
08:18Quantum systems like this could be shockingly stable, which is gold for quantum computers.
08:25Finally, quantum memory is on the horizon.
08:27Quantum computers could use these time quasi-crystals to store data long-term.
08:33Next, quantum sensors could use their incredible sensitivity to detect even the tiniest changes in the environment.
08:41And finally, the ultra-clock we mentioned before?
08:44It's coming too!
08:46These crystals would help time-keeping devices be ultra-precise.
08:50Of course, we don't need this in daily life, but it will be incredibly useful in science.
08:56Strangely enough, it turns out that the same fragility that made these crystals difficult to handle also made them perfectly
09:03tuned detectors.
09:04All this is theory for now, but as scientists continue to study this, some usable tech might not be far
09:11behind.
09:16Recently, Chinese scientists discovered something interesting on the moon, an unusual crystal.
09:22Moreover, they found out that this crystal contains an element that can literally replace nuclear fuel.
09:28Let's find out more!
09:31The composition of the moon has long remained a mystery to us.
09:35Half a century has already passed since the Apollo mission.
09:38Unfortunately, we haven't traveled to the moon much since then, so it's not surprising that it's not so easy for
09:44us to study it.
09:46But recently, we've made a breakthrough in this area.
09:49In December 2020, Chinese scientists sent the Chang'a 5 probe to the moon.
09:55The mission was named after the ancient Chinese deity of the moon, Chang'a.
10:00Quite poetic, isn't it?
10:01Anyway, after the probe went to the nearest side of the moon, it spent several days digging through the surface
10:07and rocks, and then returned to Earth.
10:10In total, it collected about 4 pounds of various lunar rocks, like basalt, solidified lava, and so on.
10:18And yeah, maybe it doesn't sound too impressive, but it's actually a mini-breakthrough.
10:23After all, we hadn't received any lunar samples since 1976.
10:28And these samples are very important for learning the history of our world.
10:33We've been struggling for many years to find out, for example, how the moon was born at all.
10:39Yes, there were a lot of theories, but we still couldn't find any proper evidence for any of them.
10:45But thanks to the latest missions and some computer simulations, scientists finally found out the truth.
10:52The moon was born when some random dwarf planet crashed into our Earth many millions of years ago.
10:58This dwarf planet was slightly smaller than Mars.
11:01The fragments of the Earth went into space, but some of them stayed in our orbit.
11:06Then they stuck together and formed the moon.
11:10It sounds horrifying, but in reality, the birth of the moon was the best thing to ever happen to our
11:16planet.
11:16If it weren't for this beautiful satellite, all our oceans would be small puddles.
11:21Life wouldn't have appeared on Earth at all.
11:24So this is already an amazing discovery.
11:27But that's still not all.
11:29Studying the collected rocks, scientists from the Beijing Research Institute discovered something unusual.
11:35A rare lunar crystal.
11:38Looks pretty boring, doesn't it?
11:40Just some tiny transparent monocrystal about the thickness of a human hair.
11:44We've already found such things on the moon before.
11:47These crystals were formed as a result of volcanic activity, just like some garnets on the Earth.
11:53And yep, the place where they discovered these crystals also suffered from volcanoes 1.2 billion years ago.
12:00That means that this tiny baby is over a billion years old.
12:06But that's not the most important thing.
12:08It's the fact that this crystal is made of a unique material, the one that we've never seen before.
12:14Researchers from the International Mineralogical Association have confirmed that such a composition can't be found anywhere on Earth.
12:23The crystal was named Chongacite, again after the same moon deity.
12:29And this is another achievement.
12:31This is the sixth previously unknown mineral that we've found on the moon, and the first one found by China.
12:38Now, it has become the third country in the world to make such a lunar discovery.
12:42However, this tiny crystal still wasn't the only remarkable thing they found.
12:47After studying this gem and about 140,000 other lunar particles, scientists have discovered something else.
12:55They found helium-3.
12:58Why is it so important?
13:00Because this is one of the elements that feed the sun and other stars in our universe.
13:08We tend to say stuff like, put out the sun, the sun is burning, and so on.
13:13And this is one of the reasons why many people actually think that the sun is a huge fireball.
13:19But it's not.
13:20Its burning is actually a completely different process, which is called nuclear fusion.
13:26The process itself is quite simple.
13:29During this reaction, hydrogen in the star turns into helium.
13:34But this simple process is actually one of the most violent and insane reactions in the universe.
13:40There's a real boiling broth of particles inside the sun.
13:44The hydrogen nuclei that jump and rush there are constantly repelling each other, since all of them are positively charged.
13:52And so, they could continue to boil and chill around without bothering anyone, if it weren't for the stars.
13:58The stars turned out to be cheaters.
14:01They have such strong gravity that they basically grab billions of these little atoms and squeeze them together.
14:07Combining with each other, these atoms create new, heavy elements, like the mentioned helium.
14:14And when this happens, they throw a lot of energy into space.
14:18And that's how the sun burns.
14:21At the same time, it spreads so much energy that we can't even imagine.
14:26Okay, so what is helium-3?
14:29Well, this is an element to which even the sun can say, whoa, dude, you should calm down.
14:34The fusion of helium-3 atoms releases even more energy than in typical nuclear fusion.
14:41And most importantly, it doesn't pollute the atmosphere with harmful things like radiation.
14:47We have very, very little helium-3 on Earth.
14:51Its prevalence in our atmosphere is about one in a million.
14:54And besides, it's constantly trying to escape from us back into space.
14:59Probably feel some bad vibes from us.
15:03However, scientists have recently found out that there's a place that contains a lot of this element.
15:09Yep, you guessed it.
15:11It's the moon.
15:13We think that there's more helium-3 on the moon than on Earth because of the solar winds.
15:18The sun has been hammering on the moon with its helium-3 for billions of years.
15:23So now, it's all over the place.
15:25It's still not too much if you compare it, for example, with Jupiter or Saturn.
15:30But don't forget how much energy it can release.
15:34For your information, with only 25 tons of helium-3, it's possible to provide America with energy for an entire
15:42year.
15:43Now, there are 35,000 tons of it here on Earth.
15:46And more than a million tons on the moon.
15:50Only these sources could feed the entire U.S. for thousands of years.
15:54So basically, in the future, helium-3 may become a new source of fuel.
16:00And it's better than nuclear fuel in basically everything.
16:04Helium-3 won't leave any harmful waste and radiation.
16:07It's more powerful and not that dangerous.
16:10In other words, this environmentally friendly and efficient energy could be a revolution for our planet.
16:17Sounds cool, huh?
16:19So, what are we waiting for?
16:21Grab the shovels, you might say.
16:23But there's a little problem here.
16:25Unfortunately, we haven't yet come up with anything as wildly strong and hot as the stars.
16:31To use helium-3, we need crazy temperatures and pressure.
16:36We need a thermonuclear reactor.
16:38And we have no idea how to build it.
16:40Yet.
16:42And even if we could heat it up to such temperatures and get the needed pressure, we still don't really
16:47know how to handle helium-3 correctly.
16:50Therefore, even if we have an infinite amount of helium-3, we still won't be able to use it.
16:56But still, there's a great power behind helium-3.
17:00So, it's not surprising that different countries have already started a race for nuclear resources.
17:05Now that Chang'e 5 has discovered a new helium-3 deposit on the nearest side of the moon, this
17:12race can become downright global.
17:14For example, China already plans a new lunar mission in 2024, Chang'e 6.
17:21During this mission, they want to collect the first samples from the far side of the moon.
17:27As you can see, finding this lunar crystal was very important for us.
17:31These crystals can help us find new ways to create helium-3.
17:35And if we manage to do that, humankind will enter a new era.
17:40But to do this, we still have to solve a number of problems.
17:44How to deliver a bunch of these lunar crystals to Earth, how to make them produce energy, and so on.
17:51Let's hope that in the future, these issues will be resolved and we'll find a way to produce clean, safe,
17:57unlimited energy.
18:01That's it for today.
18:02So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
18:07Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
Comments