This post is also available in:
עברית (Hebrew)
Researchers have developed what may be the world’s hottest engine—on a scale so small it can’t be seen without specialized equipment. Built using a suspended microscopic particle and a technique known as a Paul Trap, the system operates at temperatures hotter than the sun’s core and could reshape how scientists understand thermodynamics, as well as improve how diseases are studied.
Rather than producing power in the traditional sense, the particle engine serves as a model system to explore energy conversion and fluctuations on a microscopic scale. Unlike conventional engines, where behavior is predictable and governed by classical thermodynamic laws, this system behaves differently due to its size—sometimes cooling when heated, due to thermal fluctuations that would be negligible at larger scales.
The engine works by trapping a charged particle in a low-pressure vacuum using electric fields. By adding random noise to the voltage applied to the electrodes, the researchers increased the particle’s kinetic energy to extreme levels, resulting in effective temperatures surpassing those at the center of the sun.
According to Interesting Engineering, this seemingly niche experiment carries broader implications. Thermodynamics, which emerged during the Industrial Revolution, underpins modern energy systems. As scientists examine energy transfer at smaller and smaller scales, these principles begin to behave differently, offering new insight into fundamental physics.
But the potential applications extend beyond theory. One of the more promising avenues being explored is the use of this microscale engine as a physical model—or analog computer—for studying how proteins fold.
Protein folding plays a central role in human biology and disease. Misfolded proteins are linked to conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Simulating this process digitally is computationally intensive due to the difference in timescales between atomic movement and folding dynamics. The Paul Trap could sidestep this challenge by predicting how proteins fold and assembling them efficiently.
By analyzing the motion of the trapped particle under various simulated conditions, researchers may be able to extract useful data for predicting how real proteins behave—potentially informing future drug development or treatments.
While still in the early stages, this experiment demonstrates how microscale systems could offer insights across disciplines—from physics to medicine.
The press release can be found here.
