We all know that hot coffee cools down. But quantum mechanics can enable heat to flow the “wrong” way, making hot objects hotter and cold objects colder. Now physicists think this might have an ingenious use. On this week’s episode, host Samir Patel speaks with writer Philip Ball about how a new "quantum demon” may allow information to be processed in ways that classical physics does not permit. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.  

Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

Audio coda by Forma, courtesy of Kranky.