The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), roughly 4 miles out from campus, is a national lab run by the Department of Energy and yet remains a relatively elusive branch of Princeton’s research ...

A team of researchers at Japan’s Nagoya University has developed a mathematical model that shows that quantum theory can ...

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 ...

A chemical pump based on a 19th-century thought experiment involving an invisible “demon” could be used to help separate chemicals in drug manufacturing. Maxwell’s demon, first proposed by physicist ...

In a new study published in Physical Review Letters, scientists have discovered a novel approach to detecting the quantum properties of a system by simply using heat as a witness, requiring no direct ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If there’s one law of physics that seems easy to grasp, it’s the second law of thermodynamics: Heat flows spontaneously from hotter ...