A team of scientists claims to have created the most efficient engine in the world.
The innovative motor operates at temperatures higher than those of the solar core. It also consists of a tiny microscopic particle suspended at low pressure using electric fields.
Called a Paul trap, researchers can increase its heat exponentially by applying a noisy voltage to the electrodes that hold the particle in place.
The engine will not power a small vehicle. Instead, the team from King’s College London believe they can shed light on the laws of thermodynamics on a small scale. Unusually, it could also help scientists develop innovative treatments for diseases by improving our understanding of protein folding.
A “microcosm of the larger universe”
The King’s College team’s Paul Trap is a motor in its most basic definition: motors convert a form of energy into mechanical energy. In this case, heat is transformed into movement.
This experiment is the first of its kind to raise the temperature to such a high level and on such a small scale. According to a press release, the team behind the study found that their engine often contradicted the fundamental laws of thermodynamics.
For example, the engine would sometimes cool instead of heat up when exposed to warmer temperatures. In a newspaper article Physical Examination Lettersthe team explains how this is due to typically undetectable thermal fluctuations. These have a random influence specific to the microscopic scale. Studying these variations on a microscopic scale could help the team better understand thermodynamics as a whole.
“The engines and the types of energy transfer that occur there are a microcosm of the larger universe,” explained Molly Message, a doctoral student in the Department of Physics at King’s College London and first author of the paper, in the press release.
“The study of the steam engine gave rise to the field of thermodynamics, which in turn revealed some of the fundamental laws of physics,” she continued. “The continued study of drivers in new regimes offers the potential to expand our understanding of the universe and the processes that lead to its development.”
Investigating protein folding with the world’s most efficient motor
The scientists also believe their Paul Trap could provide an efficient new way to calculate protein folding.
Protein folding – the subject of last year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry – is crucial to good health in human physiology. Understanding the process allows scientists to develop new treatments for various diseases.
“Proteins are the engines that power most of the important processes in our body, so understanding their mechanisms and how they can go wrong is an essential step in understanding the disease and how it can be treated,” explained Dr. Jonathan Pritchett, one of the researchers involved in the study.
The team hopes their Paul Trap can be used as an analog computer, allowing researchers to predict how proteins fold and assemble efficiently.
An analog computer is a physical simulation of a system that a user is attempting to model. These types of devices date back to the times of the ancient Greeks with their Antikythera Mechanism.
The researchers say they can simulate the random forces that act on proteins during folding by applying Paul Trap electric fields. Using this analog computational method would avoid the problems associated with simulating protein folding via digital simulations, namely the fact that proteins fold in milliseconds, while their atoms move in nanoseconds, making them very difficult to model numerically.
“By simply observing how the microparticle moves and coming up with a series of equations based on that, we avoid this problem completely,” Pritchett said.
Ultimately, researchers believe the most efficient engine ever designed will help the scientific community better understand thermodynamics. Impressively, this could enable the creation of better real-world motors, while also helping to improve our understanding of human physiology.
