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Re:Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal by tenaciousDaniel on Friday May 04, 2018 @11:36AM (#16995381)
I'm a software developer with absolutely 0% experience in physics, so if this is a basic/silly question then mea culpa.

If the atoms "flip" when exposed to an electromagnetic pulse, it seems like this could be used to represent state at the atomic level, so highly relevant for computing.

Is there any current indication of how "stable" this flipped/non-flipped state is?

Re:Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal by jdrov on Friday May 04, 2018 @11:48AM (#16995483)
The state of the nuclear spin (up or down, or superposition) is definitely something that has been proposed as a quantum bit ("q-bit"), and many quantum computer proposals have used the nuclear spin as their proposed q-bit. The tricky thing is that these nuclear spins are all interacting with each other, and exercising control of the full state in the presence of those interactions is very tricky.
Re:Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal by figgis on Friday May 04, 2018 @12:51PM (#16996035)
Just wanted to share since I didn't know what it meant and googled it. It's "mea culpa". I love when people use these old Latin phrases. Never got (or taken) the chance to learn about it and it's always a very quick history lesson alongside learning a new phrase!

>In about 1220, the rite of public penance in Siena for those who had committed murder required the penitent to throw himself on the ground three times, saying: Mea culpa; peccavi; Domine miserere mei ("Through my fault. I have sinned. Lord, have mercy on me").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mea_culpa#Religious_use

Re:Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal by thomasfortes on Friday May 04, 2018 @04:10PM (#16997863)
Mea culpa is pretty common and translate similarly in Brazil (minha culpa), after all, portuguese is a language that has latin as an ancestor, but my favorite and the one that confused me the most the first time I saw is "Quod erat demonstrandum", almost all mathematical proofs that I did in college had Q.E.D. instead of the portuguese C.Q.D. at the end to indicate that that was the point where the proof was finished.
Re:Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal by tenaciousDaniel on Friday May 04, 2018 @02:45PM (#16997157)
Goddamnit, I always misspell it. Interesting; had never read about the origin of the term.
Re:Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal by stochastic_monk on Friday May 04, 2018 @03:01PM (#16997288)
If it helps for the future, it's pronounced "mayuh coolpuh", so the e makes the "ay" sound.
Re:Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal by jdmichal on Friday May 04, 2018 @05:47PM (#16998648)
The IPA is /me.a kul.pa/.

So that's a reasonable approximation. The vowels are off. If you know Spanish pronunciation, it's exactly the same for this word.

Specifically, The E sound is actually the single-vowel /e/, not the diphthong /aɪ/. The "uh" in both words is closer to "ah".

Re:Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal by dang on Friday May 04, 2018 @05:58PM (#16998733)
I fixed it for you. If you want it changed back, let me know.
Re:Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal by tannhaeuser on Friday May 04, 2018 @05:56PM (#16998720)
Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas.
Re:Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal by poopchute on Friday May 04, 2018 @05:55PM (#16998709)
The latin way to say "my bad"
Re:Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal by posterboy on Friday May 04, 2018 @03:51PM (#16997675)
miserere does sound much closer to misery than mercy. In English, it also "A medieval dagger, used for the mercy stroke to a wounded foe" ... That seems more like it.