{"id":241302,"date":"2026-07-22T00:16:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T05:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/scientists-broke-a-160-year-old-law-of-physics-to-create-programmable-heat"},"modified":"2026-07-22T00:16:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T05:16:23","slug":"scientists-broke-a-160-year-old-law-of-physics-to-create-programmable-heat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/scientists-broke-a-160-year-old-law-of-physics-to-create-programmable-heat","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Broke a 160-Year-Old Law of Physics to Create Programmable Heat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-broke-a-160-year-old-law-of-physics-to-create-programmable-heat.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There are certain laws of physics that heat must follow.<\/p>\n<p>Take <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kirchhoff%27s_law_of_thermal_radiation\">Kirchhoff\u2019s law of thermal radiation<\/a>, for example, which applies the idea of reciprocity to heat, and dictates that a surface\u2019s ability to absorb heat at a specific angle and wavelength must also match its ability to emit heat at the same angle and wavelength.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a rule that makes thermal energy difficult to control in ways we might like to, and although workarounds have been found before, they\u2019re <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1364\/oe.576573\">inefficient and volatile<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are certain laws of physics that heat must follow. Take Kirchhoff\u2019s law of thermal radiation, for example, which applies the idea of reciprocity to heat, and dictates that a surface\u2019s ability to absorb heat at a specific angle and wavelength must also match its ability to emit heat at the same angle and wavelength. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}