A bold claim that the deep ocean floor produces oxygen without any sunlight has drawn sharp scientific pushback, with critics arguing the proposed mechanism violates fundamental laws of thermodynamics ...

In a recent opinion article, marine scientists and electrochemists listed a number of reasons why it's unlikely that metallic ...

If someone asked you “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would be most ...

Thermodynamics, as with most concepts in science and physics, is most accurately described using mathematical equations. However, simple explanations, although not perfectly accurate, are sufficient ...

When French engineer Sadi Carnot calculated the maximum efficiency of a heat engine in 1824, he had no idea what heat was. In those days, physicists thought heat was a fluid called caloric. But Carnot ...

Just over 200 years after French engineer and physicist Sadi Carnot formulated the second law of thermodynamics, an international team of researchers has unveiled an analogous law for the quantum ...

Nernst's theorem—a general experimental observation presented in 1905 that entropy exchanges tend to zero when the temperature tends to zero—has been directly linked to the second principle of ...

Thermodynamics is one of the most successful theories of nature that we have. Since its inception almost 200 years ago it has survived the transition from classical mechanics to relativistic and ...

Physicists have created a device that has experimentally exceeded the conventional second law of thermodynamics. The device is an information engine, which converts information into work, and it is ...

FOR THOSE READERS who like short book reviews, let me assist you. "Four Laws That Drive the Universe," by Peter Atkins is an outstanding introduction to thermodynamics. This brief book converts ...