Physicists successfully created a working heat engine that consists of only one atom. When built on a larger scale, the output of this single-atom engine could replicate the one from a car engine.

Heat, on a microscopic level, is a constantly moving atom that vibrates off one another. Heat engines use thermodynamic systems to convert thermal energy into mechanical force. The most common forms of heat engines are the jet engines and automobile engines we have today.

What the researchers from the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and the Institute of Physics of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz created is a nanoscale heat engine that functions on a single atom. Prior to the research, scientists were only able to come up with a heat engine that has 10,000 particles.

This single-atom heat engine uses an automobile's four-stroke engine process to work. An electromagnetic radiation cone then traps the single atom before two laser beams hit the funnel.

One laser beam heats the funnel while the other beam cools it. The process subjects the atom in a cycle of thermodynamics, enabling it to move in a constant motion inside the cone. This replicates a typical engine's stroke.

"If the power of the single atom engine was scaled up from the tiny mass of an atom, its output would be equivalent to that of a car engine," said the study's press release.

The researchers said that their single-atom, nano-engine can produce power from 10 to 22 watts and can run with a remarkable 0.3 percent efficiency.

The team also plans to conduct further research to test the vast potentials of this new single-atom heat engine. For instance, linking the engine to a quantum heat bath can greatly increase its power.

The physicists also plan to further cool the single-atom in a much tighter space and analyze its quantum wave-packet behavior.

The research received a grant from the German Research Foundation and additional aid from the Volkswagen Foundation-funded "Atomic nano assembler" project and was published in the journal Science.

Heat engines have helped shape society. Without these heat engines, the Industrial Revolution would not have happened.

Today, life as we know it would be quite impossible without them. The advancements in nanotechnology enable scientists to create much smaller machines with vast potentials in improving people's lives.