Search
Thermodynamics
Known as the "past hypothesis" problem, the Universe's initially low entropy has long puzzled scientists. Now, cosmic inflation solves it.
Over billions of years, fewer stars form, galaxies mutually recede, and the Universe becomes ever darker. Here's how fast it all happens.
1hr 19mins
Theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili explores why our sense of time may be incredibly misleading, including the idea that past, present, and future might all exist at once.
Quantum entanglement links information between particles across space and time. So what happens when one of them falls into a black hole?
Long after the last star burns out, the Universe will experience its end state: a heat death. Will everything prior then be meaningless?
Many reactions emit energy, often in large amounts, but cosmic efficiency is another metric altogether. Here's how to maximize your output.
While ice itself is slick, slippery, and difficult to navigate across under most circumstances, skaters easily glide across the ice.
10 years ago, LIGO first began directly detecting gravitational waves. Now better than ever, it's revealing previously unreachable features.
The overlooked reason why "AI consciousness" isn't coming anytime soon.
Amplifying the energy within a laser, over and over, won't get you an infinite amount of energy. There's a fundamental limit due to physics.
All stars shine due to an internal source of energy. Usually, it's nuclear fusion: converting mass into energy. What makes them most bright?
Exoplanets can exist anywhere around their parent stars, even so close that they evaporate or disintegrate. Even the rocky ones.
Under extreme conditions, matter takes on properties that lead to remarkable, novel possibilities. Topological superconductors included.
Here in our Universe, stars shine brightly, providing light and heat to planets, moons, and more. But some objects get even hotter, by far.
By improving quantum error correction, quantum computations are now faster than ever. But parallel universes? That's utter nonsense here.
It's the ultimate setup for a Thanksgiving Day disaster. The physics of water and its solid, liquid, and gas phases compels us not to do it.
The Universe changes remarkably over time, with some entities surviving and others simply decaying away. Is this cosmic evolution at work?
Black holes encode information on their surfaces, but evaporate away into Hawking radiation. Is that information preserved, and if so, how?
Today, the deepest depths of intergalactic space aren't at absolute zero, but at a chill 2.73 K. How does that temperature change over time?
It's deceptively tricky to distinguish living systems from non-living systems. Physics may be key to solving the problem.
In all the Universe, only a few particles are eternally stable. The photon, the quantum of light, has an infinite lifetime. Or does it?
The passage of time is something we all experience, as it takes us from one moment to the next. But could it all just be an illusion?
From the explosions themselves to their unique and vibrant colors, the fireworks displays we adore require quantum physics.
Our thermodynamic arrow of time explains why the entropy of any isolated system always increases. But it can't explain what we perceive.
7mins
“We could be wrong. But if we are right, it’s profoundly important.” Leading mineralogist Dr. Robert Hazen on the missing law of nature that could explain why life emerges.
John Templeton Foundation
A new technique that can automatically classify phases of physical systems could help scientists investigate novel materials.
The expanding Universe, in many ways, is the ultimate out-of-equilibrium system. After enough time passes, will we eventually get there?
6mins
Physicist Sean Carroll on entropy, complexity, and the origins of life:
The second law of thermodynamics tells us that entropy always increases. But that doesn't mean it was zero at the start of the Big Bang.
Teller and Sagan debated fiercely over nuclear proliferation. But was the conflict as personal as it was intellectual for Teller?