Does Nature Break the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

[n2doc]

In seeming defiance of the second law of thermodynamics, nature is filled with examples of order emerging from chaos. A new theoretical framework resolves the apparent paradox
By J. Miguel Rubí

Science has given humanity more than its share of letdowns. It has set limits to our technology, such as the impossibility of reaching the speed of light; failed to overcome our vulnerabilities to cancer and other diseases; and confronted us with inconvenient truths, as with global climate change. But of all the comedowns, the second law of thermodynamics might well be the biggest. It says we live in a universe that is becoming ever more disordered and that there is nothing we can do about it. The mere act of living contributes to the inexorable degeneration of the world. No matter how advanced our machines become, they can never completely avoid wasting some energy and running down. Not only does the second law squash the dream of a perpetual-motion machine, it suggests that the cosmos will eventually exhaust its available energy and nod off into an eternal stasis known as heat death.

Ironically, the science of thermodynamics, of which the second law is only one part, dates to an era of technological optimism, the mid-19th century, when steam engines were transforming the world and physicists such as Rudolf Clausius, Nicolas Sadi Carnot, James Joule and Lord Kelvin developed a theory of energy and heat to understand how they work and what limited their efficiency. From these nitty-gritty beginnings, thermodynamics has become one of the most important branches of physics and engineering. It is a general theory of the collective properties of complex systems, not just steam engines but also bacterial colonies, computer memory, even black holes in the cosmos. In deep ways, all these systems behave the same. All are running down, in accordance with the second law.

But despite its empirical success, the second law often seems paradoxical. The proposition that systems steadily run down seems at odds with the many instances in nature not only of disorganization and decay but also of self-organization and growth. In addition, the original derivation of the second law has serious theoretical shortcomings. By all rights, the law should not apply as widely as it does.

more:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-nature-breaks-the-second-law

[snot]

1. see also Buckminster Fuller's concept of syntropy.

i had the same idea, then learned he'd already invented it. Clearly, in the world of information, organization (more order, less chaos) is accelerating.

[Believing Is Art]

2. I really wish the 2nd law of thermo had never been invented.

It's become a tool for stupid people who don't understand it to make stupid arguments.

This isn't in relation to the article, which was interesting. Just my general rant on entropy.

[napoleon_in_rags]

3. The second law is PERFECT. Its just that people don't understand it.

Life is a good example of "order arising out of chaos", but the second law applies to closed systems, where energy isn't pouring in. Take away the sun, and you'll see the laws of entropy applied to life in short order. Life absorbs energy, and the "Maximum entropy" (maxent) path for that energy to be absorbed and stabilized is in reproducing forms in the case of life. Richard Dawkins lays out a good description of basic pre-life replicators in the beginning of "The Selfish Gene", and you can clearly see reproducing forms arising out of a process related to entropy. The real idea is vital and pure, but interpretations like "chaos" coming from "order" are arcane and simplistic.

[bowens43]

4. No.

[Posteritatis]

13. +1 (nt)

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. I don't believe in closed systems existing anywhere in the 3d

universe... therefore the second law doesn't do much for me. What I would like to know is where does the energy come from that keeps electrons spinning around nuclei for thousands of years for the fundies and billions of years for the rest of us...

[trotsky]

9. The answer to that is, they're not *really* spinning around.

They are occupying a shell corresponding with an energy level. Envisioning atoms as tiny solar systems with electrons in "orbits" can be useful, but it's not all that accurate.

[PVnRT]

10. All systems, other than the universe itself, are arbitrarily defined

A system is merely a border surrounding a defined amount of matter and space, nothing more. Furthermore, the universe *is* a closed system - no mass enters or leaves its boundary.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

15. Where do the quantum paricles that "jump" in and out of our

universe arise from?? Interdimensional hops skips and jumps perhaps???

[Random_Australian]

24. You assume they existed before they were created.

They usually jump in and out via pair production and annihilation. There is no reason to believe they existed before that.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

26. Where does the energy come from that produces them? The

ether? A battery?? The wind? In other words, where do they originate, here or "some other place/dimension.

[PVnRT]

27. They originate here. Their mutual annihilation satisfies the First Law

In the event they arise as part of Hawking radiation, the First Law is maintained because the black hole loses mass/energy.

The universe is a closed system, period. Anything said otherwise is just speculation without proof.

[Random_Australian]

31. Here. You can create them from an energetic photon, for instance,

And in fact for reasons I won't go into you can get away with getting a lot of energy from nowhere provided you give it back fast enough. (That is, in fact, the reason why the force that holds protons together is so short-range - even at the speed of light the particles you need to get from nowhere can't travel far before you have to give them back)

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. There's no energy needed to keep electrons spinning around nuclei.

If we simplify things by keeping your planetary model of the atom, with electrons spinning around the nucleus, there's no energy being spent because there's no work being done.

Just like there's no need to spend energy to keep planets in orbit around the sun.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

14. You are describing a perpetual motion machine.... and that is in

direct violation of some laws perhaps several. I know the patent office has a hard time with this notion.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. No, a perpetual motion machine does work. There's no work done in this system.

You're confusing perpetual motion with a perpetual motion machine.

An object in motion will continue in motion.

That's not a perpetual motion machine.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

17. Perhaps you are right... the galaxy seems to be a machine to me,

however the only work being done is the (energy expended) is that which can take hundreds of millions of tons of rock and dirt and deflect if from its desired path ad infinitum.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

18. That work being done is zero. No energy expended.

The distance between a satellite and the sun does not change. Therefore no work is done. Potential energy does not change. Kinetic energy does not change. There is no energy expended.

This is really very basic physics. High school stuff.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

19. If it could, the earth and any other satellite would hurtle off into

space in an apparently straight line. It seems to me that a great deal of energy would be required to "bend" the path of such a weighty object... unless of course you don't believe in gravity then it all sort of fits together neatly.

www.thefinaltheory.com
1) Gravitational Perpetual Motion:

As we all know, perpetual motion machines are impossible,
and claims of such devices are a clear sign of bad science.
No device (or natural phenomenon) can expend energy
without draining a power source, and certainly cannot operate
with no power source at all. Yet our science states that an
object dropped into a tunnel cut through the Earth would be
accelerated to the center by gravity, then decelerated as it
approached the other end, only to be accelerated down again,
over and over – endlessly. Even our most elementary physics
states that it takes energy expenditure from a known power
source to accelerate and decelerate objects, yet there is no
power source in site here, let alone a draining one. Despite
detailed atomic theories and even having split the atom,
science has never identified a gravitational power source.
This describes an actively operating mechanism that never
ends and never drains a power source – an impossible
perpetual motion scenario, according to today’s physics.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

20. So then how does your model work.

According to your model, a body orbiting the sun forever is a perpetual motion machine. So according to entropy, the system must decay.

You're suggesting the satellite flies away from the sun.

In order to do this, the satellite would have to increase its velocity. Which would increase its kinetic energy. It'd also be increasing its potential energy, since it's getting further away from the sun. And there's work being done, since there's some force moving the satellite further away from the sun.

So, according to your hypothesis, some entropy must be providing the satellite with quite a bit of energy.

So how where does all this energy come from? Magic?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

21. I'm speaking about the energy expended to keep the earth from

flying away... constantly putting an arc in its trajectory that it wouldn't have if it weren't for the so called mass of the sun pulling on it... I'm really quite confused about the whole thing, and perhaps if I deleted my ignore list I would get some information that would enlighten me.... then again... I need to read that book again and see just how confused I can truly become. The man certainly is no idiot... but he does lose me here and there.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. I already told you, there is no energy expended.

Perhaps you should read some books on actual physics.

You are going to remain confused as long as you keep reading that loony, pseudoscience crap.

[PVnRT]

29. So-called mass?

Eh? Mass is now in question as well?

Earth does not fly away because it's angular velocity, distance and mass have it in a stable orbit around the sun. The moon, on the other hand, is very slowly drifting away, because of the collision that (probably) created it billions of years ago imparted just enough momentum to it to keep it from settling into a stable orbit.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

30. No... actually the pet theory is that the moon earth and so forth

are travelling in straight lines through 3d space.

[Random_Australian]

32. ... even though space is evidently curved, so the notion of a "straight"

line being something that looks straight in flat 3d space is wrong.

Note: You can measure the (local) curvature of space easily enough.

In general relativity, the moon earth and so forth are travelling in straight lines in curved four dimensional space. And then we measured the distortion of space and lo and behold it was there. :)

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

34. So you're saying the moon doesn't revolve around the earth?

How does that work?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

35. They revolve around the present day center of mass of the original

swirling disk of interstellar dust that eventually produced two independant spheres swirling around that center of mass noted earlier... I'd have to quote several paragraphs in order to elucidate what madness this man has released upon those easily duped by clever jargon and pseudoscientific postulates.

[Random_Australian]

23. My goodness gracious, that fuckwit is back, is he?

(No, not you 4MY, the guy you are quoting)

"No device can expend energy without draining a power source"

More exactly, energy must be conserved, only changing form. This means that at any two given times, the total energy must be the same.

For instance, as something falls, gravitational potential energy transforms into kinetic energy. As I type, chemical potential energy transforms into kinetic energy. (Well, these are classical approximations but they are close enough to the truth for what I am saying here)

So, if we take a system, give it some potential energy (say, gravitational by lifting it up), the system can then transform the energy how in whatever way.

Keep in mind the whole argument against a perpetual motion machine is that
1) You can't get any more energy than what is there and
2) Every time there is friction or the like you must expend some energy

In other words, unless you can make something perfectly frictionless, you can't make it run forever. (Also, there are some complications when you try and make it do work)

In other words, if you *were* to make something perfectly lossless, it violates no laws for it to just keep going.

Which is what a lot of things do.

Finally, if you don't believe in gravity, you're screwed. Try and make gravitational lensing work, or time dilation work without gravity. Both of these are well-measured.

Or, more accurately, try and make them work without introducing something like a God, magic, or a vast conspiracy of scientists to pre-emptively stop the spread of someones pet theory.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

25. Pets are not theoretical, and lossless jpegs eventually decay into

random pixels... anyhoo, I just "like" the ideas this guy puts out. I know science isn't about liking or wanting something to be true... but I like some of the explanations in the book.... time dilation... read the wiki... you are so above my pay grade on this... raising the white flag now, toodles.

[Random_Australian]

33. Sure, but as a warning, I just read through that guys "flaws in science"

and I have to say, they are nearly 100% full of shit.

That said, I don't know yet whether or not gravity is from nowhere. If general rel is anything like special relativity, then it's well grounded. :)

[Orrex]

6. I spilled Cheerios all over the floor, then picked them up. Order from chaos! The 2nd Law is broken!

My sophomore-year roommate used to eat his Campbell's soup cold right out of the can because he didn't want to contribute to the heat death of the universe. Every little bit helps.

[Herman74]

7. I've Always Hated Entropy...

indeed, at times I've felt conservatism = entropy.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

8. What foolishness. That "spontaneous"order consumes energy.

When order arises out of chaos without an infusion of energy then we'll have something to talk about.

(Classic example=life on Earth and solar energy)

[PVnRT]

11. OK...the author seems to be mostly referencing Onsager's work

and not describing much of his own, but SciAm isn't a scientific journal, either.

In the end, as I said above, at least from my engineering perspective, everything depends upon how you define your system. You could define a system as a single atom floating about in space, if you wanted to, and that's what it sounds like the author is doing.

From another perspective, a far more easily understood definition of entropy (one of more use to us engineers) is: Entropy is energy that is no longer available for useful work.

[Random_Australian]

22. No, the orignal derivation does not have serious effing shortcomings.

It has widely applicable reasoning, which means that it applies as widely as it does.

I don't believe that I'm seeing such bullshit as "ooooh, if there is order anywhere that means the 2nd law is broken" outside of creationist bullshit.

Whoever wrote this article can take that headline, freeze it solid, and then snap it in their arse.

Furthermore, since when does "it seems kinda paradoxical to me" equal "the law is broken! It be the end of ze world!"

Argh.