In a previous article in this series addressing evolution, I commented that some scientists, in an effort to avoid admitting the possibility of a God, will adhere to a theory even if it goes against ...

The principle of nondecreasing entropy in isolated systems, which is one of the formulations of the much-talked-about second law of thermodynamics, can be violated: It turns out that the entropy of a ...

Albert Einstein explained the following in his Autobiographical Notes of 1949: “A theory is more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different things it relates, and the ...

Thanks to the power of fluctuation relations, physicists are taking the second law of thermodynamics to settings once thought impossible. Since the steam engine began modernizing the world, the second ...

A microscopic version of a diving board has been driven to cheat the second law of thermodynamics 95 per cent of the time. The finding doesn’t challenge the validity of the law, but underscores how ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Quantum mechanics is the most successful ...

The laws of thermodynamics are pretty straightforward: Normally, heat from a hot object will flow to a cold one until they reach the same temperature, bringing the system to a state of equilibrium.