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Second law of thermodynamics “broken”

New Scientist: Second law of thermodynamics “broken”.

One of the most fundamental rules of physics, the second law of thermodynamics, has for the first time been shown not to hold for microscopic systems.

The demonstration, by chemical physicists in Australia, could place a fundamental limit on miniaturisation, because it suggests that the micro-scale devices envisaged by nanotechnologists will not behave like simple scaled-down versions of their larger counterparts – they could sometimes run backwards.

[via daypop top 40]