https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Nernst's theorem—a general experimental observation presented in 1905 that entropy exchanges tend to zero when the temperature tends to zero—has been directly linked to the second principle of thermodynamics in a paper published in The European Physical Journal Plus, whose sole author is University of Seville professor José Martín-Olalla. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-thermodynamics-revisited-year-problem-einstein.html General Physics Tue, 17 Jun 2025 11:24:42 EDT news669378277 A new study reveals it would take far longer than the lifespan of our universe for a typing monkey to randomly produce Shakespeare. So, while the Infinite Monkey Theorem is true, it is also somewhat misleading. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-monkey-unable-hamlet-lifetime-universe.html Mathematics Wed, 30 Oct 2024 10:07:04 EDT news649501597 In 2022, U.S. high school students Calcea Johnson and Ne'Kiya Jackson astonished teachers when they discovered a new way to prove Pythagoras' theorem using trigonometry after entering a competition at their local high school. As a result, both students were awarded keys to the city of New Orleans, and even received personal praise from Michelle Obama. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-high-school-students-ways-pythagoras.html Mathematics Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:10:02 EDT news649068964 Researchers at the University of Tsukuba and NIMS have observed a novel Hall effect wherein the deflection direction of current varies according to the current flow direction. Onsager's reciprocal theorem, a fundamental theorem in materials science, asserts the impossibility of such a phenomenon. However, the researchers found that the observed phenomenon could be explained without contradicting the reciprocal theorem by assuming an unconventional magnetic arrangement. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-discovery-hall-effect-violate-onsager.html Condensed Matter Thu, 14 Dec 2023 11:07:44 EST news621774463 A study published in the journal Physical Review Letters by researchers in Japan solves a long-standing problem in quantum physics by redefining the uncertainty principle. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-uncertainty-principle-unbounded.html General Physics Thu, 14 Dec 2023 10:41:59 EST news621772911 In 1960, Joaquin Luttinger introduced a universal statement that relates the total number of particles that a system can accommodate to its behavior under low-energy excitations. While Luttinger's theorem is readily verified in systems of independent particles, it also holds true in correlated quantum matter exhibiting strong interactions between the particles. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-luttinger-theorem-core-topological.html Condensed Matter Wed, 06 Dec 2023 11:38:58 EST news621085135 The Lorentz reciprocal theorem can now be applied to fluids with broken symmetries. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) in Göttingen have found a way to also accommodate this classical theorem in fluids with odd viscosities. Their discovery opens a new way to explore systems with broken symmetries. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-insights-broken-symmetries-lorentz-reciprocal.html Soft Matter Mon, 27 Nov 2023 09:56:03 EST news620301361 On June 23, 1993, the mathematician Andrew Wiles gave the last of three lectures detailing his solution to Fermat's last theorem, a problem that had remained unsolved for three and a half centuries. Wiles' announcement caused a sensation, both within the mathematical community and in the media. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-mathematicians-bridges-discipline-fermat-theorem.html Mathematics Thu, 22 Jun 2023 16:54:13 EDT news606671649 In the 18th century, the philosopher David Hume observed that induction—inferring the future based on what's happened in the past—can never be reliable. In 1997, SFI Professor David Wolpert with his colleague Bill Macready made Hume's observation mathematically precise, showing that it's impossible for any inference algorithm (such as machine learning or genetic algorithms) to be consistently better than any other for every possible real-world situation. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-implications-no-free-lunch-theorems.html Mathematics Mon, 05 Jun 2023 13:32:21 EDT news605190738 A new review looks at an important and often overlooked aspect of physics that suggested symmetry in the particle zoo and how it could be broken. https://phys.org/news/2022-05-revisiting-history-cpttheorem.html Quantum Physics Wed, 25 May 2022 11:13:51 EDT news572696020 The field of machine learning on quantum computers got a boost from new research removing a potential roadblock to the practical implementation of quantum neural networks. While theorists had previously believed an exponentially large training set would be required to train a quantum neural network, the quantum No-Free-Lunch theorem developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory shows that quantum entanglement eliminates this exponential overhead. https://phys.org/news/2022-02-entanglement-scaling-quantum-machine.html Quantum Physics Thu, 24 Feb 2022 12:47:26 EST news564929244 Einstein was no stranger to mathematical challenges. He struggled to define energy in a way that acknowledged both the law of energy conservation and covariance, which is general relativity's fundamental feature where physical laws are the same for all observers. https://phys.org/news/2021-12-einstein-quantum-mechanics-team-redefines.html Quantum Physics Tue, 14 Dec 2021 16:41:47 EST news558722504 There are certain rules that even the most extreme objects in the universe must obey. A central law for black holes predicts that the area of their event horizons—the boundary beyond which nothing can ever escape—should never shrink. This law is Hawking's area theorem, named after physicist Stephen Hawking, who derived the theorem in 1971. https://phys.org/news/2021-07-physicists-observationally-hawking-black-hole.html General Physics Thu, 01 Jul 2021 08:04:11 EDT news544345408 Using AI and computer automation, Technion researchers have developed a 'conjecture generator' that creates mathematical conjectures, which are considered to be the starting point for developing mathematical theorems. They have already used it to generate a number of previously unknown formulas. The study, which was published in the journal Nature, was carried out by undergraduates from different faculties under the tutelage of Assistant Professor Ido Kaminer of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Technion. https://phys.org/news/2021-02-ramanujan-machine-conjecture-mathematical-conjectures.html Mathematics Fri, 05 Feb 2021 11:02:04 EST news531745319 Black holes are considered amongst the most mysterious objects in the universe. Part of their intrigue arises from the fact that they are actually among the simplest solutions to Einstein's field equations of general relativity. In fact, black holes can be fully characterized by only three physical quantities: their mass, spin and charge. Since they have no additional "hairy" attributes to distinguish them, black holes are said to have "no hair"—Black holes of the same mass, spin, and charge are exactly identical to each other. https://phys.org/news/2021-01-extreme-black-holes-hair.html Astronomy Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:30:08 EST news530901002 General relativity is a profoundly complex mathematical theory, but its description of black holes is amazingly simple. A stable black hole can be described by just three properties: its mass, its electric charge and its rotation or spin. Since black holes aren't likely to have much charge, it really takes just two properties. If you know a black hole's mass and spin, you know all there is to know about the black hole. https://phys.org/news/2020-12-black-holes-gain-powers-fast.html Astronomy Fri, 11 Dec 2020 09:35:30 EST news526901723 Quantum technologies, such as quantum computers, quantum sensing devices and quantum memory, have often been found to outperform traditional electronics in speed and performance, and could thus soon help humans to tackle a variety of problems more efficiently. Despite their huge potential, most quantum systems are inherently susceptible to errors and noise, which poses a serious challenge to implementing and using them in real-world settings. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-limits-efficiency-techniques-noise-quantum.html Quantum Physics Mon, 07 Sep 2020 09:30:01 EDT news518685539 "You have to work harder to get the job done faster," explains Gianmaria Falasco, a researcher at the University of Luxembourg as he sums up the results of his latest work with Massimiliano Esposito. This will come as no surprise to anyone with any experience of racing around trying to meet appointments and deadlines, but by defining specific parameters for the relation between work expended in terms of dissipation and the rate at which a system changes state, Falasco and Esposito provide a valuable tool for those developing ways of manipulating non-equilibrium systems, be that the behavior of living cells or an electronic circuit. Additionally, the "dissipation-time uncertainty relation" they developed to define this behavior is tantalizingly suggestive of other uncertainty relations in quantum physics. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-physicists-pin-entropy.html General Physics Tue, 25 Aug 2020 09:40:01 EDT news517564044 The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of an isolated system always tends to increase over time until it reaches a maximum. In other words, disorganization increases without outside intervention. Electrical equipment inevitably heats up as part of the energy is dissipated in the form of heat instead of being used for mechanical work, and objects deteriorate over time but do not spontaneously regenerate. https://phys.org/news/2019-11-theorem-quantities-power-fluctuate-microscopic.html General Physics Wed, 27 Nov 2019 06:49:54 EST news494059598 How do you prove something? What even is proof? https://phys.org/news/2019-06-mathematical-proof-isnt-intellectual.html Mathematics Fri, 21 Jun 2019 07:54:52 EDT news480322447 Can single crystalline materials be used for low dimensional p-n junction design? This is an open and long-standing problem. Microscopic simulations based on the generalized Bloch theorem show that in single crystalline Si nanowires, an axial twist can lead to the separation of p-type and n-type dopants along the nanowire radial dimension, and thus realizes the p-n junction. A bond orbital analysis reveals that this is due to the twist-induced inhomogeneous shear strain in the nanowire. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-strategy-fabricating-p-n-junction-crystalline.html Nanomaterials Thu, 21 Mar 2019 08:50:21 EDT news472377014 Information is typically stored in physical systems, such as memory devices. But in a new study, physicists have investigated an alternative way to store and hide information, which is by storing it only in the quantum correlations among two or more systems, rather than in the systems themselves. This idea, which is called "masking," is a way of making the information inaccessible to everyone, without destroying it (as destroying quantum information is impossible). https://phys.org/news/2018-06-physicists-impossible-mask-quantum.html Quantum Physics Thu, 21 Jun 2018 09:30:01 EDT news448770581 Researchers have discovered that input-output maps, which are widely used throughout science and engineering to model systems ranging from physics to finance, are strongly biased toward producing simple outputs. The results are surprising, as naïvely there is no reason to suspect that one output should be more likely than any other. https://phys.org/news/2018-03-simplicity-common.html General Physics Mon, 12 Mar 2018 09:30:01 EDT news440044195 Researchers at Purdue University have performed the first experimental tests of several fundamental theorems in thermodynamics, verifying the relationship between them and providing a better understanding of how nanoparticles behave under fluctuation. https://phys.org/news/2018-02-validate-fluctuation-theorems.html Quantum Physics Fri, 23 Feb 2018 08:04:02 EST news438595434 Physicists have extended one of the most prominent fluctuation theorems of classical stochastic thermodynamics, the Jarzynski equality, to quantum field theory. As quantum field theory is considered to be the most fundamental theory in physics, the results allow the knowledge of stochastic thermodynamics to be applied, for the first time, across the full range of energy and length scales. https://phys.org/news/2018-02-physicists-stochastic-thermodynamics-deeper-quantum.html Quantum Physics Tue, 13 Feb 2018 09:30:02 EST news437713629 Pennsylvania's congressional district maps are almost certainly the result of gerrymandering according to an analysis based on a new mathematical theorem on bias in Markov Chains developed by Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh mathematicians. Their findings are published in the Feb. 28 online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). https://phys.org/news/2017-02-mathematical-theorem-gerrymandering-pa-congressional.html Mathematics Tue, 28 Feb 2017 13:00:16 EST news407509204 The rate at which information can be coded so that it can be decoded within a particular error probability constraint is one of the "major research topics in information theory" as Hideki Yagi at the University of Electro-Communications, Te Sun Han at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, and Ryo Nomura at Senshu University in Japan explain in their recent report. In this latest work they formulate a theorem for a general class of coding theorems that gives a formula for the decoding error capacity. They also show how the theorem reduces to known theorems for more restricted scenarios. https://phys.org/news/2016-12-coding-theorem-decoding-error-capacity.html Computer Sciences Tue, 27 Dec 2016 07:40:01 EST news402046523 There are certain moments in history that everyone remembers what it is they were doing when they heard about the event. https://phys.org/news/2016-03-wiles-fermat-theorem.html Mathematics Tue, 22 Mar 2016 06:36:10 EDT news377847350 British mathematician Sir Andrew J. Wiles has won the Abel Prize in math for cracking a centuries-old hypothesis. https://phys.org/news/2016-03-british-mathematician-sir-andrew-wiles.html Mathematics Tue, 15 Mar 2016 10:13:49 EDT news377255622 When a star collapses forming a black hole, a space-time singularity is created wherein the laws of Physics no longer work. In 1965 Sir Roger Penrose presented a theorem where he associated that singularity with so-called ''trapped surfaces'' that shrink over time. That hypothesis -one of the results of the general theory of relativity- is now celebrating its anniversary. https://phys.org/news/2015-10-golden-anniversary-black-hole-singularity.html Astronomy Thu, 01 Oct 2015 12:37:08 EDT news362921819