Here\u2019s what you\u2019ll learn when you read this story:<\/p>\n
The law is a bedrock of physics, but has long failed to describe systems that are out of thermodynamic equilibrium.<\/p>\n
The work could have applications in fields ranging from circuitry and quantum computing<\/a> to space weather.<\/p>\n The first law of thermodynamics is undergoing a huge renovation.<\/p>\n A team lead by researchers at West Virginia University released a paper detailing how the fundamental law can be applied more broadly than ever before\u2014a finding that has the potential to rewrite the way we understand complex energetic systems.<\/p>\n The first law of thermodynamics is one of the bedrock laws of physics<\/a>. Even if you\u2019re not gung-ho for physics research, you might have heard the simplified version: energy<\/a> can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can be converted into different forms.<\/p>\n \u201cSuppose you heat up a balloon,\u201d said Paul Cassak, lead author on the paper, in a press release<\/a>. \u201cThe first law of thermodynamics tells you how much the balloon expands and how much hotter the gas inside the balloon gets. The key is that the total amount of energy causing the balloon to expand and the gas to get hotter is the same as the amount of heat you put into the balloon.\u201d<\/p>\n This law has been an incredibly helpful tool for physicists since its discovery in the 1850s. But there\u2019s a catch\u2014it has historically only worked when things are in or near a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. At its core, that means the temperature<\/a> of a system is consistent throughout. There aren\u2019t big hot and cold spots; it\u2019s all basically the same temperature, which means it all has pretty much the same amount of energy.<\/p>\n And because it\u2019s no longer 1850 and we\u2019re trying to answer more detailed questions about the universe around us, researchers have long been trying to find a way to apply the first law to systems that are not in equilibrium. While you might not have to reckon with many of these systems in your day-to-day existence, they\u2019re very common throughout the universe in such substances as space plasma\u2014found everywhere from the tails of comets to the outer layers of stars.<\/p>\n The breakthrough for this team of researchers came in the form of a lot of complicated math. Basically, the energy conversion in systems that are in thermodynamic equilibrium can be described almost entirely by their density and pressure.<\/p>\n But the behavior of the energy conversion in more complicated systems is determined by a lot more than just density and pressure.<\/p>\n \u201cOut of equilibrium, the first law of thermodynamics continues to only describe energy conversion during a process that changes the density and temperature,\u201d Cassak tells Popular Mechanics. \u201cWhat we discovered is that all of the other quantities describing the gas, liquid, or plasma when it is not in equilibrium are left out of the first law of thermodynamics.\u201d<\/p>\n What the team needed was a way to quantify all of the energy conversion that wasn\u2019t described by density and pressure. And they found it.<\/p>\n