Latest Entropy Stories

New understanding of entropyFrom a laptop warming a knee to a supercomputer heating a room, the idea that computers generate heat is familiar to everyone. But theoretical physicists have discovered something astonishing: not only do computational processes sometimes generate no heat, under certain conditions they can even have a cooling effect. Behind this finding are fundamental considerations relating to knowledge and a lack of knowledge. The researchers publish their findings today in the...

The second law of thermodynamics is a big hit with the beret-wearing college crowd because of its implicit existential crunch. The tendency of a closed systems to become increasingly disordered if no energy is added or removed is a popular, if not depressing, "things fall apart" sort-of-law that would seem to confirm the adolescent experience.Now a joint team of Ukrainian and American scientists has demanded more work and less poetry from the second law of thermodynamics, proposing...

A Purdue University researcher has used "econophysics" to show that under ideal circumstances free markets promote fair salaries for workers and do not support CEO compensation practices common today.The research presents a new perspective on 18th century economist Adam Smith's concept that an "invisible hand" drives a free market economy to a collective good."It is generally believed that the free market cares only about efficiency and not fairness. However, my...

Less symmetrical and more complex patterns occur due to entropyScientists have long studied how atoms and molecules structure themselves into intricate clusters. Unlocking the design secrets of Nature offers lessons in engineering artificial systems that could self-assemble into any desired form.In the January 29th issue of Science, a team from Harvard led by Vinothan Manoharan and Michael Brenner, presents additional clues to how and why groups of atoms and molecules may favor less...

In a study that elevates the role of entropy in creating order, research led by the University of Michigan shows that certain pyramid shapes can spontaneously organize into complex quasicrystals.A quasicrystal is a solid whose components exhibit long-range order, but without a single pattern or a unit cell that repeats.A paper on the findings appears in the Dec. 10 issue of Nature. Researchers from Case Western Reserve University and Kent State University collaborated on the study.Entropy is...

Chief executives in 35 of the top Fortune 500 companies were overpaid by about 129 times their "ideal salaries" in 2008, according to a new type of theoretical analysis proposed by a Purdue University researcher to determine fair CEO compensation."One of the most pressing economic and corporate governance issues of the day is how to determine fair pay packages for CEOs," said Venkat Venkatasubramanian, a professor of chemical engineering. "The proposed theory allows...

Rather than reducing disorder, physicists find a way to simply move it somewhere elsePhysicists are continually reaching new lows as they reduce the temperatures of samples in their laboratories. But even nano-kelvins are not low enough to overcome the entropy (a measure of the disorder in a system) that stands between them and the discovery of exotic states of ultra-cold matter. Now physicists at two Italian universities have developed a technique that siphons entropy out of a collection of...

One dead person every day from anesthesia over medication should be a 'wake up' call, says Dr. Barry Friedberg. CORONA DEL MAR, Calif., April 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Anesthesia over medication kills one person every day. So reported the April issue of 'Anesthesiology,' the official journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, in the first mortality study of the 21st century. These deaths occurred because anesthesiologists are measuring the wrong thing. "Your brain is the target for...

Proposed new international 'equation of state' employs absolute over practical salinity to redefine thermodynamic equation of seawater after 30 yearsSeawater is a complex, dynamic mixture of dissolved minerals, salts, and organic materials that despite scientists best efforts, presents difficulties in measuring its potential to contain and disperse energy. Like the water itself, the calculations scientists employ to measure seawater are fluid, undergoing significant revisions and...

If you've balanced a laptop computer on your lap lately, you probably noticed a burning sensation. That's because ever-increasing processing speeds are creating more and more heat, which has to go somewhere "” in this case, into your lap.Two researchers at the University of Virginia's School of Engineering and Applied Science aim to lay the scientific groundwork that will solve the problem using nanoelectronics, considered the essential science for powering the next generation of...