A routine lab experiment by a college student has turned into one of the strangest physics stories of the year, hinting that a simple mixture of oil, water, and metal particles might behave in ways ...

The rules of statistical physics address the uncertainty about the state of a system that arises when that system interacts with its environment. But they've long missed another kind. In a new paper, ...

A nuclear engineer reacts to an experiment that appears to challenge the second law of thermodynamics. The discussion explores the physics behind energy flow entropy and why certain results may seem ...

A 155-year-old thought experiment, long thought to break the laws of thermodynamics, could be made real on a large scale. Maxwell’s demon is a thought experiment first proposed by Scottish ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Researchers have made a breakthrough in applying the first law of thermodynamics to complex systems. The law is a bedrock of physics, but has long ...