Almost exactly 200 years ago, French physicist Sadi Carnot determined the maximum efficiency of heat engines. The Carnot ...

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Quantum mechanics and classical physics don’t always get along, and can sometimes form apparent paradoxes ...

For more than a century, thermodynamics has described how heat flows and engines run, while quantum mechanics has ruled the strange behavior of atoms and photons. Physicists have long suspected that ...

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 ...

Quantum thermodynamics has emerged as an innovative field that integrates the principles of quantum mechanics with classical thermodynamic concepts to describe systems beyond equilibrium. Central to ...

Just over 200 years after French engineer and physicist Sadi Carnot formulated the second law of thermodynamics, an international team of researchers has unveiled an analogous law for the quantum ...

Heat and computers do not mix well. If computers overheat, they do not work well or may even crash. But what about the quantum computers of the future? These high-performance devices are even more ...

Technological devices are getting ever smaller, but as they approach the scale at which quantum physics matters, our understanding of how they interact with their environment evaporates. James Millen ...

For two centuries, students have learned that heat flows and engines work according to rigid limits that no machine can beat.

Even if it turns out that time loops never take shape, studying them provides key insights into the deepest rules of reality.