Thermodynamics as a research area investigates the fundamental laws governing energy, entropy, and the macroscopic behavior of physical systems at or near equilibrium, and their extensions to nonequilibrium processes. It encompasses the formulation and application of the four laws of thermodynamics, characterization of state functions, phase behavior, and thermodynamic potentials, and rigorous derivation of efficiency limits for engines, refrigerators, and energy conversion devices. Contemporary research integrates classical, statistical, and quantum thermodynamics to study emergent phenomena, irreversible processes, fluctuation theorems, and information–thermodynamics connections in complex, soft-matter, biological, and nanoscale systems.
Transistors are the fundamental building blocks behind today's electronic revolution, powering everything from smartphones to powerful servers by controlling the flow of electrical currents. But imagine a parallel world, ...
A team of researchers led by a physics graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst made the surprising discovery of what they call a "shape-recovering liquid," which defies some long-held expectations derived ...
General Physics
Apr 4, 2025
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When University of Texas at Dallas researchers tested a new surface that they designed to collect and remove condensates rapidly, the results surprised them. The mechanical engineers' design collected more condensates, or ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 24, 2025
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The Mpemba effect is an intriguing physical phenomenon that causes some systems to cool faster when they are hot than when they are warm or colder. This effect was observed in various systems, including water, which sometimes ...
Rolf Landauer showed that "information is physical" with every bit equivalent to a small amount of energy proportional to temperature. The Landauer equivalent energy of information carried, or represented by matter, effectively ...
In a new study published in Physical Review D, Professor Ginestra Bianconi, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Queen Mary University of London, proposes a new framework that could revolutionize our understanding of gravity ...
General Physics
Mar 4, 2025
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In a new study published in Physical Review Letters, scientists have discovered a novel approach to detecting the quantum properties of a system by simply using heat as a witness, requiring no direct measurement of the quantum ...
What if time is not as fixed as we thought? Imagine that instead of flowing in one direction—from past to future—time could flow forward or backwards due to processes taking place at the quantum level. This is the thought-provoking ...
Quantum Physics
Feb 13, 2025
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Researchers from Nagoya University in Japan and the Slovak Academy of Sciences have unveiled new insights into the interplay between quantum theory and thermodynamics. The team demonstrated that while quantum theory does ...
General Physics
Feb 7, 2025
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Challenging centuries-old assumptions about thermodynamics, a new study published in Physical Review Letters has shown that it is theoretically possible to design a heat engine that achieves maximum power output while approaching ...
