Recently, a team of researchers made headlines for a stunning announcement: a theoretical breakthrough that expanded our understanding of the first law of thermodynamics. But to understand that result ...

In the strange, often unintuitive world of quantum physics, one mystery has stood out for decades: Can quantum entanglement be manipulated in a reversible way, like energy in a perfect heat engine?

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Timekeeping has evolved greatly during humanity’s short time on Earth, and that legacy of metrological innovation is far from over. A new study from ...

The principle of nondecreasing entropy in isolated systems, which is one of the formulations of the much-talked-about second law of thermodynamics, can be violated: It turns out that the entropy of a ...

A microscopic version of a diving board has been driven to cheat the second law of thermodynamics 95 per cent of the time. The finding doesn’t challenge the validity of the law, but underscores how ...

A forgotten cup of coffee will gradually cool down as its heat flows into the cooler surrounding air, but in the quantum realm, it appears this experience can be turned on its head. As a result, we ...

Albert Einstein explained the following in his Autobiographical Notes of 1949: “A theory is more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different things it relates, and the ...

Chase P. Broedersz is in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1081 HV Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and the Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics, Ludwig ...

Thanks to the power of fluctuation relations, physicists are taking the second law of thermodynamics to settings once thought impossible. Since the steam engine began modernizing the world, the second ...

Elementary classical thermodynamics, applications of the first law and the second laws of thermodynamics to power and refrigeration cycles, mixtures and solutions, thermodynamic relations, chemical ...