Two research teams from Harvard and the University of Maryland have published research papers today in Nature which detail how they have independently managed to create real time crystals for the first time in a laboratory setting. Time crystals are a new phase of matter that was first described as a mathematical oddity by the Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek in 2012, in which the periodicity of a three-dimensional spatial crystal is extended into the fourth dimension: time. If this sounds mind blowing and nearly impossible to understand, that's because it is. To fully appreciate the magnitude of the Harvard and Maryland teams' work, I'd highly recommend checking out Motherboard's time crystal primer.

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