Heat normally flows from hot to cold. Image courtesy of klyaksun/Shutterstock
Joel Kontinen
A forgotten cup of coffee will gradually cool down as its
heat flows into the cooler surrounding air, but in the quantum realm, it
appears this experience can be turned on its head. As a result, we may need to
update the second law of thermodynamics, a fundamental principle of physics
that states heat energy always flows from hot to cold.
But in the computer world, this could be the contrary.
Dawei Lu at
the Southern University of Science and Technology in China and his colleagues
have seemingly broken this law with a molecule of crotonic acid, which contains
atoms of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The researchers used the nuclei of four
of its carbon atoms as qubits, which are the basic building blocks of quantum
computers and can store quantum information. When used in computation,
researchers normally control the quantum states of the qubits with.
Source:
Karmela
Padavic-Callaghan 2026
Posts
