Cathal O'Connell, Cosmos
Isaac Asimov's short story The Last Question follows the human race over a trillion-year quest to circumvent the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Now, US and Russian physicists may have found a way to do just that. In physics terms, this is the equivalent of finding a river that flows uphill, or chucking an ice cube on the fire to fan the flame.The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that entropy (a measure of disorder) always increases. At root, that's simply because there generally are a lot more messy states than neat states.