Imagine a clock that ticks forever without a battery, without gears wound by hand, without any energy source we can recognize. Its hands move endlessly, not powered by electricity or springs, but by the hidden rhythm of nature itself. This sounds like the plot of a science fiction story, yet physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder have built something astonishingly close: a time crystal.
Using liquid crystals—the very same materials that make your smartphone screen glow—they created a system that keeps moving without ever running out of energy. This invention is not just another scientific curiosity. It is a glimpse into a new phase of matter, something that seems to defy our normal understanding of time itself.
What Exactly Is a Time Crystal?
To appreciate the wonder of time crystals, it helps to start with ordinary crystals. Diamonds, quartz, even table salt—these are all “space crystals.” What makes them special is the way their atoms lock into repeating patterns, like tiles on a floor that extend endlessly. Their symmetry in space gives them strength, durability, and the beautiful structures we recognize.
But in 2012, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Frank Wilczek proposed a startling twist: what if there could be crystals not in space, but in time? Instead of atoms arranged in repeating positions, could particles arrange themselves in repeating motions, endlessly looping without any extra push?
At first, this idea seemed impossible. A system in motion usually loses energy and slows down. Perpetual motion, after all, has always been considered unattainable. Yet, over the past decade, scientists have inched closer to Wilczek’s dream. They’ve discovered states of matter that oscillate rhythmically, as if caught in a perfect dance—never quite stopping, never needing a conductor to keep time.
These are time crystals: matter that organizes not just in space but in the very flow of time.
From Theory to Visibility
Many early time crystals were only detectable through complicated quantum experiments. In 2021, for example, Google’s Sycamore quantum computer managed to simulate a time crystal, using carefully controlled atoms flicked by lasers. It was groundbreaking, but invisible to human eyes.
What makes the Colorado team’s breakthrough remarkable is that their time crystal can be seen. Graduate student Hanqing Zhao and physics professor Ivan Smalyukh achieved this by filling glass cells with liquid crystals. These rod-shaped molecules, halfway between a solid and a liquid, already have strange properties. They twist, align, and bend light—hence their use in display screens.
But under the right conditions, with a certain kind of light shone on them, the molecules begin to swirl into complex patterns that repeat endlessly. Through a microscope, they appear as glowing, psychedelic tiger stripes—alive, shifting, and mesmerizing. Unlike many fragile quantum experiments, these structures last for hours, stable yet dynamic, like an eternal pendulum.
Smalyukh puts it simply: “Everything is born out of nothing. All you do is shine a light, and this whole world of time crystals emerges.”
Dancing Molecules, Eternal Rhythms
The mechanism is as fascinating as the result. When the liquid crystals are pressed tightly together, they form tiny twists, or “kinks.” These kinks behave like particles, moving, colliding, and interacting as though they were dancers in a ballroom.
Picture a grand dance floor. Partners spin, separate, weave back together, and repeat their steps with flawless timing. No conductor is shouting instructions. No music is playing. Yet the dancers never stop moving in rhythm. This is what happens inside the liquid crystal cells: a spontaneous choreography of matter in time.
Even more impressively, the patterns resist disruption. Raising or lowering the temperature doesn’t break the rhythm. Once the conditions are set, the system sustains its endless dance, no matter what.
Smalyukh marvels at the simplicity: “You just create some conditions that aren’t that special. You shine a light, and the whole thing happens.”
Why Time Crystals Matter
At first glance, time crystals might seem like little more than a scientific oddity, a curiosity to amuse physicists. But their potential reaches far deeper.
Because their patterns are stable and predictable, time crystals could become tools for technology. Imagine banknotes embedded with time crystal “watermarks,” visible only when exposed to light, making counterfeiting nearly impossible. Or consider data storage, where stacking different types of time crystals could encode vast amounts of information in endlessly repeating signals.
Beyond practical uses, time crystals also expand the frontiers of physics. They challenge our traditional views of energy, motion, and equilibrium. In a universe where everything tends toward decay—where batteries die, machines break, and stars burn out—time crystals represent something profoundly strange: a system that refuses to settle down.
A Glimpse into the Future
The discovery at the University of Colorado Boulder is not the final chapter of the time crystal story—it is the opening act. Each new experiment brings us closer to understanding how these bizarre structures work and how they might transform the technologies of tomorrow.
But perhaps the most beautiful part of the discovery is not its applications, but its symbolism. The time crystal reminds us that nature still has secrets hidden in plain sight. By shining a light on something as ordinary as liquid crystals, researchers revealed a whole new phase of matter, a rhythm of existence that had been waiting patiently to be discovered.
In the end, time crystals are more than scientific breakthroughs. They are windows into the mystery of time itself. They suggest that even in a universe ruled by entropy and decay, there can be pockets of eternal motion—tiny clocks that tick without end, not because of clever engineering, but because the universe allows it.
And perhaps that is the greatest wonder of all: that hidden inside everyday matter is the possibility of infinity.
More information: Hanqing Zhao et al, Space-time crystals from particle-like topological solitons, Nature Materials (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-025-02344-1
