Sometimes, even the simplest things can set off a quantum phenomenon.

“Our system is remarkable because it’s incredibly simple,” said paper author and physicist David Grier of New York University ...

Very simplified toy models help scientists get started, but the real world is far more complex.

A team of New York University researchers announced in early February 2026 that they had created “levitating” time crystals, ...

Physicists at NYU have discovered a new type of time crystal—an exotic state of matter whose particles rhythmically “tick” while levitating on sound waves.

Physicists in Finland are the latest scientists to create “time crystals,” a newly discovered phase of matter that exists only at tiny atomic scales and extremely low temperatures but also seems to ...

A time crystal as seen under a microscope. A time crystal is a form of matter that shows continuous, repeating patterns over time, much like how atoms in a normal crystal repeat in space. Examples ...

Acoustic tweezers use sound waves to create a potential-energy well that can hold an object in place – they are the acoustic ...

Editor's Note: This article was updated on March 9 at 11:20 a.m. E.T. A bizarre new state of matter known as a time crystal seems to suspend the laws of thermodynamics almost indefinitely, two new ...

Time crystals sound like something a video game character would be trying to collect, but this bizarre phase of matter is very real – and now one of them has been created in Google’s quantum processor ...