We can diagnose an object’s quantumness from the way it radiates heat

Everything radiates heat, but when quantum objects do it, they can reveal properties that would otherwise be difficult to detect without being destroyed in the process. This means we can diagnose an object’s quantumness by observing how it warms up or cools down.

Thermodynamics, the study of how heat flows between objects, was developed to better understand engines, but Patryk Lipka-Bartosik at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and his colleagues wanted to apply…