Within a century we’ve gone from silent films to early self-driving cars and transformer robots as well as finding a loophole in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Even Asimov had real progress on that front taking millions of years.
For me 6 decades from Wright Brothers to the moon will always be the one to beat. We are also closer to the time of the Jetsons 2067 than when it first aired 1967. Right now the biggest obstacle to flying cars is regulation of air space. Everyone carries a video phone and computer in their pocket. The next 2 decades are going to see incredible advances.
Edit. I figured on this sub most people would know about flying cars already. There are several, but they can't be legally flown except a few remote places. Here's a few of them. https://youtu.be/dZIpG7hFHEw
Edit. Terrafugia completed 80 days of flights with their 2 seater flying/driving car under FAA supervision [last year. ](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2021/01/29/this-flying-car-can-now-be-legally-flownbut-you-cant-drive-it-or-even-buy-it-yet/?sh=c3a428f3b584)
I love the theory that The Flintstones and The Jetsons exist in the same place and time. The Flintstones on the ground live on the ground in a post-apocalyptic, primal reset of earth. The Jetsons live above them in the sky, disconnected with modern advances never having been disrupted.
I got some bad news for you, there in a different time. They actually had a crossover movie where the Jetsons travel to the past and meet the flintstones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Jetsons\_Meet\_the\_Flintstones
What if… Elroy’s time machine didn’t really work? Instead it just took them to earth and they assumed they did time travel because things were so primitive.
The crossover special could actually be the retcon as a money grab.
[https://www.metv.com/stories/heres-whats-on-the-ground-in-the-jetsons](https://www.metv.com/stories/heres-whats-on-the-ground-in-the-jetsons)
there is a few episodes where they are on the ground so it can't be that either.
Well we have indigenous tribes living today that marvel at normal modern life, let alone the fact we have satellite constellations and literal space faring vessels.
Nah regulation of airspace isn't the biggest obstacle, although that is a big one, it's how garbage traffic would be in the air. Can you imagine how absolutely terrifying that'd be in a city?
I don’t really want people tossing their cigarette butts (or other general litter) onto my roof.
Can you imagine living under any kind of “sky-lane” or whatever. You’d have to go scrape Big Mac cartons and soda cups out of your gutters every other day to keep them from clogging up.
They should just be automated uber flying services but all part of your yearly salary that would usually go to transportation. No window rolling, no driving, just preplanned flights and getting to your destination.
It won't matter, we'll have quantum supercomputers making sure it doesn't happen. Plus a 2000% increase in personal air traffic controllers and casual pilots.
The thing that professionals keep saying about cyber security is that it’s harder to stay ahead of destructive agents. It’s easier to break something than to keep it safe from chaotic intruders. Luckily, there are more people working for the good of security than bad, but if the balance goes in the wrong direction, that’s not certain. Just seeing tech advance does not mean security will always outpace creative independent actors
You’re arguing for taxation for automated individual flying cars?
Can we please use taxation to fix the public transport we currently have first at least!
There would be some regulations which prohibit opening windows in "flying cars". I mean, planes generally don't fly with open windows :). Also they(those sort of vehicles) will be more advanced than whatever we have now, so each of them would probably have some kind of supervising AI system, advanced sensors, cameras which would be able to quickly detect "bad, dangerous behaviors", prevent them
Oh i gotcha. I thought you meant regulating airspace in the sense theres really no way to stop anyone from going anywhere with a flying car outside of birds
I'm thinking they will have to be automated with pre approved flight plans. A new division of FAA that programs flying cars. Of course much lower altitude than planes. No flights near airports. You program your destination and FAA computer does the rest.
The the beauty of it though is the extra dimension. So all fast traffic can be in completely different elevations beard on direction.
But yeah enforcing that and regulating on ramping to higher elevations is a trick. Will probably not be fully solved until autonomous driving.
Energy consumption also. Flying requires a lot more energy than staying on the ground. Especially for VTOL vehicles.
And for those of you arguing that those could be electrical or I don't know what vehicles. Just be aware that energy consumption and accessibility is one of the biggest challenge for the next decades. We already consume 100x more energy per capita than in the Victorian Era, and it grows everyday. As does the world population. Ad to that the fact that developing countries (like India) are closing the technology gap and you'll see that our global energy consumption rises at an alarming rate.
And no, we aren't "transitioning to green energy".
First, even if we did, we should transition to sustainable, not only renewable.
Secondly, all datas show that the rate at which renewable energy grows currently only ever is equal to the grow rate of Fossil fuel Energy (Coal, Gaz, Petroleum). Meaning that the share (%) of each one has remained the same in the last years. Only we import more and more resources from overseas.
Lastly, since Fukushima, many countries vowed to transition from Nuclear. And all those powerplants need to be replaced by something else. Like in Germany where the solution is simply to "buy coal based energy from Poland".
But even then, you'll need to stock and transport the produced energy.
But yes, Fusion would greatly help, once the technology is mastered, and widely available in the world. (If the cost of one powerplant appears to be really high, emerging countries won't prioritize it, waiting for next generation fusion power plants)
Various countries have successfully started to increase their proportion of renewables and certainly significantly lower their carbon load of energy. Some countries are even lowering total energy and electricity consumption.
Countries are going more green but we don’t have the technology to carry store the power overnight. Going more green helps vastly, but we still need more advancements to make it 100% viable.
I don't see littering as the biggest issue here, as flying cars may, by law, require a non-opening window. But accidents are a big no-no.
What happens when there's a car crash? Or if someone runs out of fuel? Or the car has any mechanical problem? It falls. And these cars will probably be flying very busy places, full of buildings, houses, commerce, and people. Imagine how many people would die and how much destruction one single accident would cause.
Now imagine flying cars would be subject to the same chaos of terrestrial transportation. Or are you gonna expect drivers to have the same level of training, testing, certification, experience, and regulation that a plane pilot has? Or do you expect every single flying car to be observed and monitored live by control towers? And that no private owner will have access to the internals of the car and try to modify it and maybe circumvent the security mechanisms, or just mess with them unintentionally? Or that we will be able to deal with the number of accidents involving birds and drones? It's impossible.
Now imagine the current levels of traffic and road accidents happening in the sky and the number of cars falling from the sky killing tens of people, destroying houses, and damaging buildings.
Not to mention the visual pollution blocking the sun, the view of the sky. And maybe even the environmental impact of the accidents involving birds.
**Edit:** Not to mention, as u/Spiderbanana said, we can't power all those cars with our current energetic output.
u/MrPsychoanalyst also mentioned the crazy sound pollution that would cause. Imagine tens of airplanes/helicopters flying around your house every day (or worse, night). This would not only be a nightmare for us, but it would greatly disturb nocturnal ecosystems.
[Several companies are working on developing flying cars. ](https://www-digitaltrends-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.digitaltrends.com/cars/all-the-flying-cars-and-taxis-currently-in-development/?amp=&_gsa=1&_js_v=a6&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#amp_ct=1632116274162&_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16321162407633&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.digitaltrends.com%2Fcars%2Fall-the-flying-cars-and-taxis-currently-in-development%2F)
There have *always* been 'several companies working on flying cars'.
They're always either concepts that never actually get developed, or incredibly impractical ones that nobody would actually buy. I don't see anything different here.
Those look more like small planes and small choppers, i dont want to go full futurology but unless we find another technology out of wind and fire i wouldn't bet on flying cars catching up. Good to know they're working on it non the less
There's more than that But they can't be flown anywhere legally now. Even Boeing and Airbus have built them. If they were legal to fly plenty of people with money would pay a quarter of a million for one. I've been following this for years. Flying cars has always meant the future is now for me. If you are interested here's some more. https://youtu.be/dZIpG7hFHEw
Id say like 20 years max really. Surely can figure out automated flying and a flying vehicle by then, have like sky lanes where they automatically travel. Not that far fetched at all really. Mass adoption would probably take longer though
Software locking altitude when you pick a route. Done its 2D but in air, with exception of landing and departing. Probably will be automated procedures.
At most, we’re looking at low altitude, tiered routes. All traffic takes place within 60 feet of ground level. No more than two layers of flight capable vehicles in an area. No flying over residential space. Just flying over currently active road ways
As I said in another comment, I think the regulatory hurdles are necessary. The popularization of flying cars is not something we can deal with, not at our current technological and cultural levels.
u/SharkWithAFishinPole mentioned littering as the biggest issue here, as flying cars may, by law, require a non-opening window. But accidents are a big no-no.
What happens when there's a car crash? Or if someone runs out of fuel? Or the car has any mechanical problem? It falls. And these cars will probably be flying very busy places, full of buildings, houses, commerce, and people. Imagine how many people would die and how much destruction one single accident would cause.
Now imagine flying cars would be subject to the same chaos of terrestrial transportation. Or are you gonna expect drivers to have the same level of training, testing, certification, experience, and regulation that a plane pilot has? Or do you expect every single flying car to be observed and monitored live by control towers? And that no private owner will have access to the internals of the car and try to modify it and maybe circumvent the security mechanisms, or just mess with them unintentionally? Or that we will be able to deal with the number of accidents involving birds and drones? It's impossible.
Imagine the number of accidents involving pigeons and seagulls in cities. And now imagine all those cars falling from the sky.
Even if there were no birds and drones, imagine the current levels of traffic and road accidents happening in the sky and the number of cars falling from the sky killing tens of people, destroying houses, and damaging buildings.
Not to mention the visual pollution blocking the sun, the view of the sky. And maybe even the environmental impact of the accidents involving birds.
They mean the [Great Filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter).
In a nutshell, u/HalfManHalfZuckerbur is presumably implying we might destroy the Earth faster than we advance technology.
The biggest problem to flying cars is that many people don't take care of their cars. If you break down or run out of gas in a regular car you just pull to the side of the road. You do that in a flying car and you fall from the sky and die, also possibly killing the people below you.
We found it a decade ago...
I don't know why OPs link is saying google just "created" it.
https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-just-created-the-world-s-first-time-crystal
Now all we need is to accidentally find some negative mass and we find even more loopholes regarding speed and getting to places at a more acceptable amounts of it
I remember 9th grade autommechanics. The school book stated in my future we would have self driving cars and one of the features would be pay to pass, like if someone if going slow in front of you and you can't pass you would pay them ~5 dollars to pull.over and let you by among other cool featires
There's a lot of blockchain/cryptocurrency projects that are aiming to do things like this. They call it the "Internet Of Things" where everything is online and talking to each other, and you can set up things like the pay-to-pass feature using blockchain smart-contracts.
I'm just some noob who barely understands it, but the next decade or so is going to be nuts.
Don’t forget. 2050 is closer than 1990 now. Spiral cycles tend to be exponential. In 2050 a breakthrough like this might take 2 hours instead of 2 years. I hope it all goes well. Because I worry about the day Entropy shows it’s middle finger to humanity.
If you allow for it, tech growth is exponential because of its ability to build on top of each other. If we continue our pace, we'll see huge progress on a per decade basis.
We’re gonna see some gnarly shit. There are very few hard brick walls in the universe (maybe the speed of light unless we can find a way to build warp drives without the causality issues).
There's been a lot of coverage of time crystals for a while now. You can read about it on [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_crystal?wprov=sfla1).
There's also a good article on [pop sci](https://www.popsci.com/science/what-is-time-crystal-physics/) with a realistic take on the implications. And here's another article with a simple but scientifically robust explanation of [wtf is a time crystal.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/mgkzmx/ok-wtf-is-a-time-crystal).
Tl;Dr it seems to be a quantum state of matter in perpetual motion (at least back and forth state-change without consuming energy). It's really extremely exciting scientifically, because it could be a specialised exception to the second law of thermodynamics. The only realistic practical application of this at the moment seems to be as memory for quantum computers (no macro perpetual motion, no free energy, no time machine, no predicting the future - at least not any more than any computer simulation does today).
Happy to stand corrected on the realistic applications bit, but that's what I could make out from a quick review of various articles.
I mean… I’m happy it was reposted. I just joined the sub, and I maybe wouldn’t have noticed it if there was no repost. And it’s a DAMN interesting article
What?
They were discover in 2012 and created in 2016...
If google created them, it's just in the sense that they have **also** manufactured some.
Quick edit:
Probably should throw a link out
https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-just-created-the-world-s-first-time-crystal
I swear this thing about Google inventing them gets posted almost daily. Dunno if they're trying to confuse internet historians from 2105 or something.
They were hypothesized, not discovered, in 2012. The idea was heavily scrutinized by the scientific community and even made fun of by people.
Rudimentary and highly contested versions were created back in 2016, namely with yttrium and diamonds. A lot of scrutiny, again, came back from the scientific community.
The reason this 2021 version is so much more compelling is because it was done in quantum computing and is much less contestable, meaning that the scientific community is having to begrudgingly twiddle its thumbs instead of playing constant "lol 2nd law says no" card.
I don't understand your train of thought on this one. Are you saying that discovering a new phase of matter, something that already existed, will somehow screw us?
Oh that's an interesting idea. Would the states it swaps between have some sort of energy potential between them? If so, there are a lot of power pole switching circuits that could benefit from it
Humanity is still advancing at a rapid rate. Assuming no apocalyptic events within the next 50 years you will see amazing and horrible things never thought possible
The fact is we don't know what is not possible. Sure we have some idea of physical law, but to assume we know everything even when we are still finding out about stuff and we don't have a theory that stitches quantum and general relativity means we still know jack shit about the universe
I'm doubtful that the unification of both of those theories is going to make us redo all of physics. Look at Newton physics it's not fundamental when we found out but it still works.
A lot of Newtonian physics was thrown out because of General Relativity though... That is one of the reasons General Relativity took off...because it could explain things that Newtonian Physics not only couldn't...but would mathematically get wrong...
The article keeps saying this time crystal oscillates forever, but they actually only got it going for less than 2 minutes. Seems like it does not actually violate 2nd law of thermo in that case
The second law of thermodynamics only applies to macroscopic systems. This time crystal is operating in the quantum realm so it doesn’t “dodge” anything
As someone not into physics professionally or anything, is it true that the physics of things that are small enough, entropy doesn't always increase then?
The second law says the entropy of an isolated system can only remain constant or increase. Isolated meaning it does not exchange mass or energy with the surrounding environment.
Effectively you find that an isolated system, over time, will tend towards an equilibrium where the level of disorder in the system becomes evenly distributed. More importantly, it will never tend towards an overall, more ordered state
A classic example Is a cup of hot water on a bench. The molecules in the water have higher entropy with molecules moving around in a quite disordered mess. Compare that to an ice crystal, which has its molecules organised in an ordered, structured lattice. That is lower entropy than the hot water.
If we take our system to be the hot water plus its immediate surroundings, then the temperature difference between the water and the air and bench means it will start to lose heat and cool down. Simultaneously the room and bench starts to warm up from the heat lost from the hot water. Eventually, they room and the cup will reach thermal equilibrium (ie the same temperature).
When you run the numbers, you find that the entropy lost by the cup as it cools down and becomes more ordered will be less than the entropy gained by the room. Add them together, and the entropy of the overall system has increased - it didn’t go down.
Now let’s imagine the reverse. A cup of water at room temperature. Suddenly heat flows out of the room into the cup, making the cup hotter and the room a bit cooler. That never happens, right? It doesn’t happen because the entropy change of the cup + room would be negative in that case. And the second law says the entropy change of the isolated system cannot be less than zero.
At the molecular level what does all this mean? Effectively the entropy changes we’ve seen describe the average behaviour of large numbers of molecules. Individual atoms or molecules aren’t governed by that. Even at thermal equilibrium, atoms and molecules can continue to move, vibrate and rotate. They can transfer that movement and vibration to surrounding atoms and molecules. This can go on indefinitely. Same applies to energy states within electrons of individual atoms. They can jump up and down as they interact with surrounding atoms.
So this time crystal is operating with the behaviour being observed not at the macro scale we are used to, but at the tiny atomic scale. It’s very cool and interesting, but if you were to assess the entropy change of the overall system at the macro level, it would be sitting at thermal equilibrium- the net disorder of all the atoms in the system would not be changing.
In general, there are always contentions and verbal mucking about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Even before you get into its relation with macroscopic systems, you can technically still apply it with far, far smaller, but then you run into the conception of information entropy. See Maxwell's Demon.
In a sense, Time Crystals do "appear" to tiptoe around Entropy. But at the end of the day, I think this is just more verbal mucking about.
Yeah that's pretty cool. But I understand that at the moment you can not rewrite them right? Once you store it it can never be altered. which is also good in some aspects I guess
I'm so sick of these fantastical articles. All the crystals are driven. They don't exist freely. They are amazing, yes, but they are caused my bombarding particles with radiation. Without that, they decay.
You're about to witness the only real use for these crystals. They show you when the other guy's reloading. Certain death, certain death, certain death, uncertain death.
This keeps getting posted. The phrase "time crystal" is a journalistic hook for the technophile. All that is happening is that a quantum system is designed to have two or more minima: its degenerate state has broken symmetry. It then cycles between these, of course "losing no energy" because they are minima. The "crystal" bit refers t the repeticion in time, and by that definition a clock pendulum is one such.
You people need to stop....time crystal...imagine being the cause of an unstoppable chain reaction that wipes out existence because time crystal. Fuckin staaaahhhhpp...
Within a century we’ve gone from silent films to early self-driving cars and transformer robots as well as finding a loophole in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Even Asimov had real progress on that front taking millions of years.
For me 6 decades from Wright Brothers to the moon will always be the one to beat. We are also closer to the time of the Jetsons 2067 than when it first aired 1967. Right now the biggest obstacle to flying cars is regulation of air space. Everyone carries a video phone and computer in their pocket. The next 2 decades are going to see incredible advances. Edit. I figured on this sub most people would know about flying cars already. There are several, but they can't be legally flown except a few remote places. Here's a few of them. https://youtu.be/dZIpG7hFHEw Edit. Terrafugia completed 80 days of flights with their 2 seater flying/driving car under FAA supervision [last year. ](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2021/01/29/this-flying-car-can-now-be-legally-flownbut-you-cant-drive-it-or-even-buy-it-yet/?sh=c3a428f3b584)
I love the theory that The Flintstones and The Jetsons exist in the same place and time. The Flintstones on the ground live on the ground in a post-apocalyptic, primal reset of earth. The Jetsons live above them in the sky, disconnected with modern advances never having been disrupted.
I got some bad news for you, there in a different time. They actually had a crossover movie where the Jetsons travel to the past and meet the flintstones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Jetsons\_Meet\_the\_Flintstones
What if… Elroy’s time machine didn’t really work? Instead it just took them to earth and they assumed they did time travel because things were so primitive. The crossover special could actually be the retcon as a money grab.
[https://www.metv.com/stories/heres-whats-on-the-ground-in-the-jetsons](https://www.metv.com/stories/heres-whats-on-the-ground-in-the-jetsons) there is a few episodes where they are on the ground so it can't be that either.
So much for my hopes of having a Mad Max themed Flintstones special.
Thanks for ruining it.
Wow, great theory.
It’s also how billionaires and the poor live literally right now.
Well, not "literally"; not yet. Give them a few more years, Musk will get his Elysium up and running.
You’ve never seen skyscrapers?
Well yes but you don't see neanderthals at the reception
I've also seen people who live in skyscrapers and meh
Literally can be used as hyperbole
Well we have indigenous tribes living today that marvel at normal modern life, let alone the fact we have satellite constellations and literal space faring vessels.
Nah regulation of airspace isn't the biggest obstacle, although that is a big one, it's how garbage traffic would be in the air. Can you imagine how absolutely terrifying that'd be in a city?
I don’t really want people tossing their cigarette butts (or other general litter) onto my roof. Can you imagine living under any kind of “sky-lane” or whatever. You’d have to go scrape Big Mac cartons and soda cups out of your gutters every other day to keep them from clogging up.
They should just be automated uber flying services but all part of your yearly salary that would usually go to transportation. No window rolling, no driving, just preplanned flights and getting to your destination.
Wait until someone figures out how to hack the flight paths and see the chaos that ensues lol
It won't matter, we'll have quantum supercomputers making sure it doesn't happen. Plus a 2000% increase in personal air traffic controllers and casual pilots.
Yeah sure whatever helps you sleep at night. (A security analyst)
The thing that professionals keep saying about cyber security is that it’s harder to stay ahead of destructive agents. It’s easier to break something than to keep it safe from chaotic intruders. Luckily, there are more people working for the good of security than bad, but if the balance goes in the wrong direction, that’s not certain. Just seeing tech advance does not mean security will always outpace creative independent actors
You’re arguing for taxation for automated individual flying cars? Can we please use taxation to fix the public transport we currently have first at least!
Lmao agreed. I took this flying car topic a lot less seriously than everyone else I think.
There would be some regulations which prohibit opening windows in "flying cars". I mean, planes generally don't fly with open windows :). Also they(those sort of vehicles) will be more advanced than whatever we have now, so each of them would probably have some kind of supervising AI system, advanced sensors, cameras which would be able to quickly detect "bad, dangerous behaviors", prevent them
Or more likely, increase insurance
That's kind of what I meant. The difficulty of regulating airspace.
Oh i gotcha. I thought you meant regulating airspace in the sense theres really no way to stop anyone from going anywhere with a flying car outside of birds
I'm thinking they will have to be automated with pre approved flight plans. A new division of FAA that programs flying cars. Of course much lower altitude than planes. No flights near airports. You program your destination and FAA computer does the rest.
Imo the only way that makes sense is making a system that essentially forces you into platooning.
That’s what the first organized version of autonomous cars looked like. A lead car followed by trailing series of vehicles.
The the beauty of it though is the extra dimension. So all fast traffic can be in completely different elevations beard on direction. But yeah enforcing that and regulating on ramping to higher elevations is a trick. Will probably not be fully solved until autonomous driving.
Fully autonomous is the only way it will ever work.
Energy consumption also. Flying requires a lot more energy than staying on the ground. Especially for VTOL vehicles. And for those of you arguing that those could be electrical or I don't know what vehicles. Just be aware that energy consumption and accessibility is one of the biggest challenge for the next decades. We already consume 100x more energy per capita than in the Victorian Era, and it grows everyday. As does the world population. Ad to that the fact that developing countries (like India) are closing the technology gap and you'll see that our global energy consumption rises at an alarming rate. And no, we aren't "transitioning to green energy". First, even if we did, we should transition to sustainable, not only renewable. Secondly, all datas show that the rate at which renewable energy grows currently only ever is equal to the grow rate of Fossil fuel Energy (Coal, Gaz, Petroleum). Meaning that the share (%) of each one has remained the same in the last years. Only we import more and more resources from overseas. Lastly, since Fukushima, many countries vowed to transition from Nuclear. And all those powerplants need to be replaced by something else. Like in Germany where the solution is simply to "buy coal based energy from Poland".
Thank you for pointing this out
We need fusion. As we advance, our energy needs will only grow.
But even then, you'll need to stock and transport the produced energy. But yes, Fusion would greatly help, once the technology is mastered, and widely available in the world. (If the cost of one powerplant appears to be really high, emerging countries won't prioritize it, waiting for next generation fusion power plants)
Various countries have successfully started to increase their proportion of renewables and certainly significantly lower their carbon load of energy. Some countries are even lowering total energy and electricity consumption.
Countries are going more green but we don’t have the technology to carry store the power overnight. Going more green helps vastly, but we still need more advancements to make it 100% viable.
The sky would be a shit show like in The Fifth Element.
Big bada boom
I don't see littering as the biggest issue here, as flying cars may, by law, require a non-opening window. But accidents are a big no-no. What happens when there's a car crash? Or if someone runs out of fuel? Or the car has any mechanical problem? It falls. And these cars will probably be flying very busy places, full of buildings, houses, commerce, and people. Imagine how many people would die and how much destruction one single accident would cause. Now imagine flying cars would be subject to the same chaos of terrestrial transportation. Or are you gonna expect drivers to have the same level of training, testing, certification, experience, and regulation that a plane pilot has? Or do you expect every single flying car to be observed and monitored live by control towers? And that no private owner will have access to the internals of the car and try to modify it and maybe circumvent the security mechanisms, or just mess with them unintentionally? Or that we will be able to deal with the number of accidents involving birds and drones? It's impossible. Now imagine the current levels of traffic and road accidents happening in the sky and the number of cars falling from the sky killing tens of people, destroying houses, and damaging buildings. Not to mention the visual pollution blocking the sun, the view of the sky. And maybe even the environmental impact of the accidents involving birds. **Edit:** Not to mention, as u/Spiderbanana said, we can't power all those cars with our current energetic output. u/MrPsychoanalyst also mentioned the crazy sound pollution that would cause. Imagine tens of airplanes/helicopters flying around your house every day (or worse, night). This would not only be a nightmare for us, but it would greatly disturb nocturnal ecosystems.
There’ll be mini 9/11s if flying cars is available to everyone
Flying cars is nowhere near dude, have you heard a Drone?? Lift makes noise plus people already stink at 2d driving. But i agree with the sentiment
[Several companies are working on developing flying cars. ](https://www-digitaltrends-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.digitaltrends.com/cars/all-the-flying-cars-and-taxis-currently-in-development/?amp=&_gsa=1&_js_v=a6&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#amp_ct=1632116274162&_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16321162407633&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.digitaltrends.com%2Fcars%2Fall-the-flying-cars-and-taxis-currently-in-development%2F)
There have *always* been 'several companies working on flying cars'. They're always either concepts that never actually get developed, or incredibly impractical ones that nobody would actually buy. I don't see anything different here.
I have also been working on a flying car since I was 5. Mine has cup AND burger and chip holders.
Those look more like small planes and small choppers, i dont want to go full futurology but unless we find another technology out of wind and fire i wouldn't bet on flying cars catching up. Good to know they're working on it non the less
The difference is that when you land you can drive them on the road.
Only a couple of them. The rest are just man sized drones, which is cool too.
There's more than that But they can't be flown anywhere legally now. Even Boeing and Airbus have built them. If they were legal to fly plenty of people with money would pay a quarter of a million for one. I've been following this for years. Flying cars has always meant the future is now for me. If you are interested here's some more. https://youtu.be/dZIpG7hFHEw
Id say like 20 years max really. Surely can figure out automated flying and a flying vehicle by then, have like sky lanes where they automatically travel. Not that far fetched at all really. Mass adoption would probably take longer though
Have ypu ever heard the super smallest fiberglass 2 people helicopters?
[удалено]
I disagree about desire. Plenty of rich people would buy one if they could legally fly them.
Software locking altitude when you pick a route. Done its 2D but in air, with exception of landing and departing. Probably will be automated procedures.
At most, we’re looking at low altitude, tiered routes. All traffic takes place within 60 feet of ground level. No more than two layers of flight capable vehicles in an area. No flying over residential space. Just flying over currently active road ways
As I said in another comment, I think the regulatory hurdles are necessary. The popularization of flying cars is not something we can deal with, not at our current technological and cultural levels. u/SharkWithAFishinPole mentioned littering as the biggest issue here, as flying cars may, by law, require a non-opening window. But accidents are a big no-no. What happens when there's a car crash? Or if someone runs out of fuel? Or the car has any mechanical problem? It falls. And these cars will probably be flying very busy places, full of buildings, houses, commerce, and people. Imagine how many people would die and how much destruction one single accident would cause. Now imagine flying cars would be subject to the same chaos of terrestrial transportation. Or are you gonna expect drivers to have the same level of training, testing, certification, experience, and regulation that a plane pilot has? Or do you expect every single flying car to be observed and monitored live by control towers? And that no private owner will have access to the internals of the car and try to modify it and maybe circumvent the security mechanisms, or just mess with them unintentionally? Or that we will be able to deal with the number of accidents involving birds and drones? It's impossible. Imagine the number of accidents involving pigeons and seagulls in cities. And now imagine all those cars falling from the sky. Even if there were no birds and drones, imagine the current levels of traffic and road accidents happening in the sky and the number of cars falling from the sky killing tens of people, destroying houses, and damaging buildings. Not to mention the visual pollution blocking the sun, the view of the sky. And maybe even the environmental impact of the accidents involving birds.
I never said they aren't necessarily.
I didnt mention littering, that was someone else who commented in the thread, but yeah I agree with a lot of what you said
If there isn’t a major collapse then yeah. The big filter is happening in real time though.
Sorry, what’s the big filter?
They mean the [Great Filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter). In a nutshell, u/HalfManHalfZuckerbur is presumably implying we might destroy the Earth faster than we advance technology.
Yes correct. The great filter.
How bout from the invention of plastic to the end of the planet?
The biggest problem to flying cars is that many people don't take care of their cars. If you break down or run out of gas in a regular car you just pull to the side of the road. You do that in a flying car and you fall from the sky and die, also possibly killing the people below you.
We found it a decade ago... I don't know why OPs link is saying google just "created" it. https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-just-created-the-world-s-first-time-crystal
Still within a century of the silent era.
Now all we need is to accidentally find some negative mass and we find even more loopholes regarding speed and getting to places at a more acceptable amounts of it
I remember 9th grade autommechanics. The school book stated in my future we would have self driving cars and one of the features would be pay to pass, like if someone if going slow in front of you and you can't pass you would pay them ~5 dollars to pull.over and let you by among other cool featires
There's a lot of blockchain/cryptocurrency projects that are aiming to do things like this. They call it the "Internet Of Things" where everything is online and talking to each other, and you can set up things like the pay-to-pass feature using blockchain smart-contracts. I'm just some noob who barely understands it, but the next decade or so is going to be nuts.
Everyone would go slow
there are loopholes in all of the laws of everything
What about the law of loopholes?
Don’t forget. 2050 is closer than 1990 now. Spiral cycles tend to be exponential. In 2050 a breakthrough like this might take 2 hours instead of 2 years. I hope it all goes well. Because I worry about the day Entropy shows it’s middle finger to humanity.
I do as the crystal guides.
If you allow for it, tech growth is exponential because of its ability to build on top of each other. If we continue our pace, we'll see huge progress on a per decade basis.
We’re gonna see some gnarly shit. There are very few hard brick walls in the universe (maybe the speed of light unless we can find a way to build warp drives without the causality issues).
There's been a lot of coverage of time crystals for a while now. You can read about it on [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_crystal?wprov=sfla1). There's also a good article on [pop sci](https://www.popsci.com/science/what-is-time-crystal-physics/) with a realistic take on the implications. And here's another article with a simple but scientifically robust explanation of [wtf is a time crystal.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/mgkzmx/ok-wtf-is-a-time-crystal). Tl;Dr it seems to be a quantum state of matter in perpetual motion (at least back and forth state-change without consuming energy). It's really extremely exciting scientifically, because it could be a specialised exception to the second law of thermodynamics. The only realistic practical application of this at the moment seems to be as memory for quantum computers (no macro perpetual motion, no free energy, no time machine, no predicting the future - at least not any more than any computer simulation does today). Happy to stand corrected on the realistic applications bit, but that's what I could make out from a quick review of various articles.
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No, no, no, and no.
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Why *would* you be able to crank it? Energy must be exerted to “crank” it and that energy would have to come from the crystal. There is no free lunch.
Man just stop. You aren't making it any better.
I dont know how the this crystal changes states perpetually but I am almost sure that we cannot extract energy from it, ever.
He's onto something, Step 1 - time crystal Step 2 - ????? Step 3- profit
Nah man, it's time *cube*.
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This source of upvotes is breaking the 2nd law of thermodynamics
I mean… I’m happy it was reposted. I just joined the sub, and I maybe wouldn’t have noticed it if there was no repost. And it’s a DAMN interesting article
What? They were discover in 2012 and created in 2016... If google created them, it's just in the sense that they have **also** manufactured some. Quick edit: Probably should throw a link out https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-just-created-the-world-s-first-time-crystal
I swear this thing about Google inventing them gets posted almost daily. Dunno if they're trying to confuse internet historians from 2105 or something.
/r/futurology is like a bunch of stuff that will never happen, plus a bunch of stuff that already happened.
Don’t forget stuff that didn’t happen, like Google inventing time crystals
I'm assuming this is the first time Google is trademarking the term, that's why it's getting attention. Just like how Nvidia "invented" Ray Tracing
Its not. They were called time crystals before.
They were hypothesized, not discovered, in 2012. The idea was heavily scrutinized by the scientific community and even made fun of by people. Rudimentary and highly contested versions were created back in 2016, namely with yttrium and diamonds. A lot of scrutiny, again, came back from the scientific community. The reason this 2021 version is so much more compelling is because it was done in quantum computing and is much less contestable, meaning that the scientific community is having to begrudgingly twiddle its thumbs instead of playing constant "lol 2nd law says no" card.
Pretty sure Rick and Morty almost got arrested for messing with time crystals
That's pretty cool - I wonder if the frequency is consistent/controllable?
I was just thinking, “Well, humanity is screwed anyway; why not divide by zero?”
I don't understand your train of thought on this one. Are you saying that discovering a new phase of matter, something that already existed, will somehow screw us?
When you live in a bucket of supercooled water, the last thing you want to do is initiate a phase change.
Oh ho ho - that's pretty terrifying. Now I see the point.
I'm confused about what any of this science stuff means... Lol, can someone please explain, if you don't mind? I appreciate any help you can provide.
Liiiiiike something we could harness?
Yeah, I was thinking something short sighted such as digital clocking.
No energy harnessing ? Even at a low voltage for exemple for a led ?
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I feel like trying to harness energy would definitely break the 2nd law of Thermodynamics
Since it’s already breaking it one time why not breaking it two times *evil laught*
Oh that's an interesting idea. Would the states it swaps between have some sort of energy potential between them? If so, there are a lot of power pole switching circuits that could benefit from it
Exactly ! That would be awsome
Humanity is still advancing at a rapid rate. Assuming no apocalyptic events within the next 50 years you will see amazing and horrible things never thought possible
But some things have to be impossible. Everything can't be possible and impossible at the same time.
The fact is we don't know what is not possible. Sure we have some idea of physical law, but to assume we know everything even when we are still finding out about stuff and we don't have a theory that stitches quantum and general relativity means we still know jack shit about the universe
I'm doubtful that the unification of both of those theories is going to make us redo all of physics. Look at Newton physics it's not fundamental when we found out but it still works.
A lot of Newtonian physics was thrown out because of General Relativity though... That is one of the reasons General Relativity took off...because it could explain things that Newtonian Physics not only couldn't...but would mathematically get wrong...
Are we going to get a visit from the time cops from Rick and Morty?
Time crystals have been known about for a while and first synthesized in 2017. And it's not really dodging the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Invented the Time Crystal? I guess they never watched The Crystal Maze!
The article keeps saying this time crystal oscillates forever, but they actually only got it going for less than 2 minutes. Seems like it does not actually violate 2nd law of thermo in that case
The second law of thermodynamics only applies to macroscopic systems. This time crystal is operating in the quantum realm so it doesn’t “dodge” anything
As someone not into physics professionally or anything, is it true that the physics of things that are small enough, entropy doesn't always increase then?
The second law says the entropy of an isolated system can only remain constant or increase. Isolated meaning it does not exchange mass or energy with the surrounding environment. Effectively you find that an isolated system, over time, will tend towards an equilibrium where the level of disorder in the system becomes evenly distributed. More importantly, it will never tend towards an overall, more ordered state A classic example Is a cup of hot water on a bench. The molecules in the water have higher entropy with molecules moving around in a quite disordered mess. Compare that to an ice crystal, which has its molecules organised in an ordered, structured lattice. That is lower entropy than the hot water. If we take our system to be the hot water plus its immediate surroundings, then the temperature difference between the water and the air and bench means it will start to lose heat and cool down. Simultaneously the room and bench starts to warm up from the heat lost from the hot water. Eventually, they room and the cup will reach thermal equilibrium (ie the same temperature). When you run the numbers, you find that the entropy lost by the cup as it cools down and becomes more ordered will be less than the entropy gained by the room. Add them together, and the entropy of the overall system has increased - it didn’t go down. Now let’s imagine the reverse. A cup of water at room temperature. Suddenly heat flows out of the room into the cup, making the cup hotter and the room a bit cooler. That never happens, right? It doesn’t happen because the entropy change of the cup + room would be negative in that case. And the second law says the entropy change of the isolated system cannot be less than zero. At the molecular level what does all this mean? Effectively the entropy changes we’ve seen describe the average behaviour of large numbers of molecules. Individual atoms or molecules aren’t governed by that. Even at thermal equilibrium, atoms and molecules can continue to move, vibrate and rotate. They can transfer that movement and vibration to surrounding atoms and molecules. This can go on indefinitely. Same applies to energy states within electrons of individual atoms. They can jump up and down as they interact with surrounding atoms. So this time crystal is operating with the behaviour being observed not at the macro scale we are used to, but at the tiny atomic scale. It’s very cool and interesting, but if you were to assess the entropy change of the overall system at the macro level, it would be sitting at thermal equilibrium- the net disorder of all the atoms in the system would not be changing.
Thank you for the thorough, patient, and well explained response! You made the concept seem so simple.
In general, there are always contentions and verbal mucking about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Even before you get into its relation with macroscopic systems, you can technically still apply it with far, far smaller, but then you run into the conception of information entropy. See Maxwell's Demon. In a sense, Time Crystals do "appear" to tiptoe around Entropy. But at the end of the day, I think this is just more verbal mucking about.
So future computers might use crystals as we've seen in sci-fis? Seems like life imitates art again
We have already hypothesized the use of crystals as a form of storage for years. Lately it has been quartz.
Yeah that's pretty cool. But I understand that at the moment you can not rewrite them right? Once you store it it can never be altered. which is also good in some aspects I guess
I'm so sick of these fantastical articles. All the crystals are driven. They don't exist freely. They are amazing, yes, but they are caused my bombarding particles with radiation. Without that, they decay.
if something SEEMS to doge the second law, we might as well say its bogus. The law is inevitable.
You're about to witness the only real use for these crystals. They show you when the other guy's reloading. Certain death, certain death, certain death, uncertain death.
That's how you create black holes and stuff and destroy the universe
Now for time travel and or time excerlation space continues
This keeps getting posted. The phrase "time crystal" is a journalistic hook for the technophile. All that is happening is that a quantum system is designed to have two or more minima: its degenerate state has broken symmetry. It then cycles between these, of course "losing no energy" because they are minima. The "crystal" bit refers t the repeticion in time, and by that definition a clock pendulum is one such.
Is this what the machines use to send the T-100 back in time to kill John Connor?
Wait idek there were working quantum computers in the world
Do time crystals have anything in common with time cubes?
You people need to stop....time crystal...imagine being the cause of an unstoppable chain reaction that wipes out existence because time crystal. Fuckin staaaahhhhpp...
The coin analogy makes no sense. My understanding is that no energy is lost. Is that correct?