Related Story A College Student Broke the Laws of ThermodynamicsHowever, even the laws of quantum physics have limitations. To understand how this kind of clock would work, it helps to go back to the basics and analyze the structural components that make up what we think of as a clock. “Every clock needs two components: first, a time base generator—such as a pendulum in a pendulum clock, or even a quantum oscillation,” Marcus Huber, the senior author of the study from TU Wien, said in a press statement . This is where scientists got the idea that any clock with increased precision also has increased entropy on a mostly 1:1 scale, due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. “The crucial thing about our method is that one hand behaves purely in terms of quantum physics, and only the other, slower hand actually has an entropy-generating effect.”For now, this technical skirting of the Second Law of Thermodynamics is only theoretical.