Thermodynamics and statistical physics provide a unified framework linking the macroscopic laws of energy, work, and entropy to the microscopic motions of particles. Thermodynamics, rooted in the laws ...

"In quantum physics, the entire system is described by a single large many-particle quantum state," says Prof. Joachim Burgdörfer (TU Wien). "How a random distribution and thus a temperature should ...

Physicists at West Virginia University have made a breakthrough on an age-old limitation of the first law of thermodynamics. West Virginia University physicists have made a breakthrough on an age-old ...

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 ...

A paper titled "Universality of the thermodynamics of a quantum-mechanically radiating black hole departing from thermality," published in Physics Letters B highlights the importance of considering ...

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 ...

Image of argon plasma glowing a bluish color in an experiment at the WVU Center for KINETIC Plasma Physics. (Credit: WVU Photo/Brian Persinger) The four laws of thermodynamics are an established ...

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, ...

A Massachusetts college student stumbled upon a liquid that appears to regain its shape without an obvious energy source, baffling physicists. The so‑called “shape‑recovering” liquid, made from oil, ...

A groundbreaking collaboration between Oreoluwa Alade, a PhD candidate in Computational Physics at North Dakota State U ...