In a previous article in this series addressing evolution, I commented that some scientists, in an effort to avoid admitting the possibility of a God, will adhere to a theory even if it goes against ...

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 ...

Albert Einstein explained the following in his Autobiographical Notes of 1949: “A theory is more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different things it relates, and the ...

The principle of nondecreasing entropy in isolated systems, which is one of the formulations of the much-talked-about second law of thermodynamics, can be violated: It turns out that the entropy of a ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Quantum mechanics is the most successful ...

IN “The New Background of Science” Sir James Jeans, in discussing the activities of life in relation to the second law of thermodynamics, states that living organisms must possess some method of ...

CLAUSIUS' supposed deduction of the second law from the ordinary equations of dynamics in the form has been discussed at length by Messrs. Larmor and Bryan in their Report on Thermodynamics for the ...

In the 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell, who developed the modern theory of electromagnetism, introduced Maxwell's demon and the theory of stochastic thermodynamics was conceived. Maxwell's intent is ...