A long-standing law of thermodynamics turns out to have a loophole at the smallest scales. Researchers have shown that quantum engines made of correlated particles can exceed the traditional ...

Two physicists at the University of Stuttgart have demonstrated that the Carnot principle, a foundational rule of thermodynamics, does not fully apply ...

One famous limit of thermodynamics is that heat engines, like steam engines and internal combustion engines, must be less efficient than a Carnot heat engine (a heat engine cycle designed by French ...

Physicists in the Netherlands have built a heat engine that might be the tiniest ever created. Based on “piezoresistive” silicon, and smaller than a typical biological cell, the engine could find ...

Thermoelectrics using nanostructures offers the potential of getting very close to the carnot limit of efficiency using very light weight systems for convert heat to electricity. Early versions of ...

One of the basic truths learned in college thermodynamics courses is that no heat-activated cycle can be devised that is more efficient than a Carnot cycle operating between the same temperature ...

Scientists are working on a heat engine that consists of just a single ion. Such a nano-heat engine could be far more efficient than, for example, a car engine or a coal-fired power plant. Scientists ...

Heat is animus. It was there at the birth of the universe, and its death will be the universe’s death. It is impossible to overstate its importance — both throughout human history and across modern ...