Can quantum systems become more disordered, as thermodynamics would predict? Yes, they can - if a proper definition of "entropy" is used. It is one of the most important laws of nature that we know: ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6, 2023 – Though a cornerstone of thermodynamics, entropy remains one of the most vexing concepts to teach budding physicists in the classroom. As a result, many people oversimplify ...

As each heat bath is described by a thermal distribution, the total thermodynamic entropy production in the medium is given by Note that, by introducing transition rates, we have implicitly assumed ...

Blinking dots Photoluminescence image of individual quantum dots used in the experiment. Under time-dependent driving, the ...

We have been taught to think of entropy as a bad thing. "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," wrote William Butler Yeats in the aftermath of World War I, ...

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 ...

Have you ever heard of a Perpetual Motion Machine? More to the point, have you ever heard of why Perpetual Motion Machines are impossible? One of the reasons is because of the first law of ...

Every moment that passes finds us traveling from the past to the present and into the future, with time always flowing in the same direction. At no point does it ever appear to either stand still or ...

How are controversial ideas handled by modern science? A common charge leveled against science (generally by those who are unhappy with its conclusions) is that the only way to get funding or continue ...