Heat has always been something we thought we understood. From baking bread to running engines, the idea seemed simple: heat spreads out smoothly, like water soaking through a sponge. That simple ...

Scientific American is part of Springer Nature, which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them can be found at www ...

MIT says its new solid-state thermophotovoltaic heat engine can harvest more energy from heat than the average steam turbine, at a fraction of the cost and using no moving parts. Huge implications for ...