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thermodynamics

Dendritic ice crystals grow from top to bottom across the frame of a video.
condensed matter physics

Controversy Continues Over Whether Hot Water Freezes Faster Than Cold

By Adam Mann
June 29, 2022
Read Later

Decades after a Tanzanian teenager initiated study of the “Mpemba effect,” the effort to confirm or refute it is leading physicists toward new theories about how substances relax to equilibrium.

A curly arrow being straightened out.
theoretical physics

Physicists Rewrite the Fundamental Law That Leads to Disorder

By Philip Ball
May 26, 2022
Read Later

The second law of thermodynamics is among the most sacred in all of science, but it has always rested on 19th century arguments about probability. New arguments trace its true source to the flows of quantum information.

Quantized Columns

Beyond the Second Law

By Nicole Yunger Halpern
March 31, 2022
Read Later

Thanks to the power of fluctuation relations, physicists are taking the second law of thermodynamics to settings once thought impossible.

Close-up video of bubbles in a lava lamp moving and splitting under the influence of heat.
origins of life

At the Dawn of Life, Heat May Have Driven Cell Division

By Carrie Arnold
November 23, 2021
Read Later

A mathematical model shows how a thermodynamic mechanism could have made protocells split in two.

Illustration of various kinds of clocks floating against a pink background.
quantum information theory

The New Thermodynamic Understanding of Clocks

By Natalie Wolchover
August 31, 2021
Read Later

Investigations of the simplest possible clocks have revealed their fundamental limitations — as well as insights into the nature of time itself.

An illustration of a demon’s face.
explainers

How Maxwell’s Demon Continues to Startle Scientists

By Jonathan O'Callaghan
April 22, 2021
Read Later

The thorny thought experiment has been turned into a real experiment — one that physicists use to probe the physics of information.

A drawing of a piece of folded paper going back and forth between paper airplane and paper bird shapes.
Abstractions blog

Some Proteins Change Their Folds to Perform Different Jobs

By Viviane Callier
February 3, 2021
Read Later

Unusual proteins that can quickly fold into different shapes provide cells with a novel regulatory mechanism.

materials science

The Shape-Shifting Squeeze Coolers

By Marcus Woo
August 24, 2020
Read Later

Push or crush a new class of materials, and they’ll undergo record-breaking temperature changes.

universality

The Universal Law That Aims Time’s Arrow

By Natalie Wolchover
August 1, 2019
Read Later

A new look at a ubiquitous phenomenon has uncovered unexpected fractal behavior that could give us clues about the early universe and the arrow of time.


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