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Published online 23 July 2002 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news020722-2

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Second law broken

Small-scale energy fluctuations could limit minaturization.

Researchers have shown for the first time that, on the level of thousands of atoms and molecules, fleeting energy increases violate the second law of thermodynamics1. This is the tenet that some energy will always be lost when converting from one type to another.

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