"In quantum physics, the entire system is described by a single large many-particle quantum state," says Prof. Joachim Burgdörfer (TU Wien). "How a random distribution and thus a temperature should ...

Physicists at West Virginia University have made a breakthrough on an age-old limitation of the first law of thermodynamics. West Virginia University physicists have made a breakthrough on an age-old ...

When French engineer Sadi Carnot calculated the maximum efficiency of a heat engine in 1824, he had no idea what heat was. In those days, physicists thought heat was a fluid called caloric. But Carnot ...

A study published in Physical Review Letters (PRL) details a "Gambling Carnot Engine" that researchers report can attain 100% efficiency while also improving power generation. The researchers present ...

Recent studies have developed fundamental limitations on nanoscale thermodynamics, in terms of a set of independent free energy relations. Here we show that free energy relations cannot properly ...

A controversial theory in physics suggests that your memories might not be real, but rather an illusion created by the ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about physics, science, academia, and pop culture. We're nearing the end of a months-long home improvement project that ...

Image of argon plasma glowing a bluish color in an experiment at the WVU Center for KINETIC Plasma Physics. (Credit: WVU Photo/Brian Persinger) The four laws of thermodynamics are an established ...

Thermal operations are an operational model of non-equilibrium quantum thermodynamics. In the absence of coherence between energy levels, exact state transition conditions under thermal operations are ...

Physicists in the UK and Russia have revived concepts first put forth in the 1940s to develop a new theory of the heat capacity of liquids. Created by Dima Bolmatov and Kostya Trachenko of Queen Mary, ...