The laws of thermodynamics don't accurately account for the complex processes in living cells – do we need a new one to ...

The light interacts with the cavity and makes an arbitrary number of bounces before leaking out. This emergent light is traditionally treated as heat in quantum simulations. However, it can still be ...

For more than a century, gravity has been the stubborn outlier in physics, perfectly described on cosmic scales yet refusing to mesh with the quantum rules that govern everything else. A growing camp ...

Thermodynamics was built to describe steam engines and stars, yet the same equations now sit at the heart of quantum ...

Researchers have devised a new way to define thermodynamic concepts in microscopic quantum systems, where conventional distinctions between heat and work begin to blur. Researchers at the University o ...

One of the particles acts as a thermometer and the whole system is simulated on the computer. Credit: TU Wien One of the particles acts as a thermometer and the whole system is simulated on 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 ...

Stochastic thermodynamics and quantum systems constitute an emerging interdisciplinary field that extends classical thermodynamic concepts into realms where fluctuations and quantum effects play a ...

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 ...

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, ...