In a recent paper, SFI Professor David Wolpert, SFI Fractal Faculty member Carlo Rovelli, and physicist Jordan Scharnhorst examine a longstanding, paradoxical thought experiment in statistical physics ...

Can quantum systems become more disordered, as thermodynamics would predict? Yes, they can - if a proper definition of "entropy" is used. It is one of the most important laws of nature that we know: ...

Pioneers of evolutionary psychology John Tooby, Leda Cosmides, and H. Clark Barrett argue that “the Second Law of Thermodynamics is the First Law of Psychology” in a 2003 paper of that very name. The ...

A jewellery chain, like everything else in the universe, is subject to the second law of thermodynamics, explains one reader ...

When an empty magazine is attached and the gun is aimed at the wall, bullets embedded in the wall fly backward and load into the magazine with an explosion. Scattered smoke and ashes gather to create ...

Thanks to the power of fluctuation relations, physicists are taking the second law of thermodynamics to settings once thought impossible. Since the steam engine began modernizing the world, the second ...

The universe, in all its vastness, is governed by physical laws that dictate the ebb and flow of matter and energy. A cornerstone among these laws is the second law of thermodynamics, which suggests a ...