The light interacts with the cavity and makes an arbitrary number of bounces before leaking out. This emergent light is traditionally treated as heat in quantum simulations. However, it can still be ...

Though a cornerstone of thermodynamics, entropy remains one of the most vexing concepts to teach budding physicists in the classroom. Physics teachers designed a hand-held model to demonstrate the ...

In a study published in Physical Review Letters, physicists have demonstrated that black holes satisfy the third law of ...

A groundbreaking new method developed at the University of Osaka calculates the entropy of liquids using a non-empirical approach, requiring only the atomic species as input. The paper is published in ...

One of the enormous conceptual ideas that came along with Einstein's theory of relativity was the surprise that time itself, long considered fundamental and universal, is actually relative. Different ...

A study has developed a new method that enables quantum computers to measure the thermodynamic properties of systems by calculating the zeros of the partition function. A study led by researchers at ...

In all of physical law, there’s arguably no principle more sacrosanct than the second law of thermodynamics — the notion that entropy, a measure of disorder, will always stay the same or increase. “If ...

Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at The Ohio State University, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of "Your Place in the Universe" (2018). Sutter contributed this article to ...

Murphy's Law states, "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Entropy is sort of like Murphy's Law applied to the entire universe. Put simply, entropy is a measure of disorder, and the Second Law ...

Two clashing ideas about disorder inside black holes now point to the same strange conclusions, and it could reshape the ...