Heat energy leaps through empty space, thanks to quantum weirdness

Date posted
Funding Agency
(Funded by the National Science Foundation)

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have shown that heat energy can leap across a few hundred nanometers of a complete vacuum, thanks to a quantum mechanical phenomenon called the Casimir interaction. This interaction could have profound implications for the design of computer chips and nanoscale electronic components, where heat dissipation is key.