A long-standing law of thermodynamics turns out to have a loophole at the smallest scales. Researchers have shown that quantum engines made of correlated particles can exceed the traditional ...

Physicists in the Netherlands have built a heat engine that might be the tiniest ever created. Based on “piezoresistive” silicon, and smaller than a typical biological cell, the engine could find ...

For the first time, a quantum engine has outperformed its traditional equivalent, without any special tweaks to its environment. The device harnesses the weird physics of very small objects to produce ...

A research team in Germany has achieved a stunning theoretical breakthrough that could reshape one of physics’ oldest foundations after demonstrating that the no longer holds true for objects on the ...

In and out: An illustration of the quantum engine as a piston, showing the piston compressed when the particles in the gas exist as bosonic molecules and expanded when they are individual fermionic ...

A tiny, particle-sized engine that runs at temperatures approaching the innermost core of the Sun could open a window into the smallest extremes of thermodynamics. By levitating a single particle of ...

The hottest engine ever created is, by some definitions, not an engine and not particularly hot. But it reveals the weird physics of extreme temperatures at the microscale. The engine is made of a ...

Scientists are working on a heat engine that consists of just a single ion. Such a nano-heat engine could be far more efficient than, for example, a car engine or a coal-fired power plant. Scientists ...