DNAunion: NEWSFLASH! 2nd Law of Thermodynamics Violated!
"But now a space-borne experiment has for the first time accomplished what
the second law of thermodynamics seems to forbid: transfer of heat from a
cold surface to a hot liquid." (Mark Sincell, Backward Heat Flow Bends the
Law a Bit, Science, Volume 288, Number 5467, Issue of 5 May 2000, pp. 789-791)
It appears that the near-zero gravity onboard the Mir space station allowed a
certain process to occur that does not occur here on Earth (here, gravity's
influence prevents the it from occurring, so the law has never been
"violated").
Okay, okay, the guilt is unbearable: enough of the over-dramatization and
"one-sided, selective quoting" games. The article goes on to say:
"Despite appearances to the contrary, the experiment didn't really break the
second law of thermodynamics, Hegseth says. Strictly speaking, the law
applies not to changes in temperature but to changes in entropy--a related
but different property. What's more, it applies only to systems in
thermodynamic equilibrium. Inside the [non-biological] cell on board Mir,
conditions were changing so fast that they left equilibrium behind. Only
temporarily, however: After about 2 minutes, the second law reasserted
itself, and the bubble cooled back down to the same temperature as the wall
and the fluid. The counterintuitive heat flow was a transient temperature
overshoot, Hegseth says--no lapse, no miracle, just "a weird way to get back
to equilibrium"." (Mark Sincell, Backward Heat Flow Bends the Law a Bit,
Science, Volume 288, Number 5467, Issue of 5 May 2000, pp. 789-791)
The sensationalism was to emphasize that I found it so intriguing that
something that *appears at first glance* to go against what physics states
can happen was found when unusual conditions were encountered so close to
home. Should this make us reevaluate, at least to some degree, the statement
that the same laws of physics apply equally everywhere in the Universe?
Or perhaps the "lesson" is that there might be processes that can actually
occur, that physics currently says cannot. Consider in addition the recent
breaking of the universal speed barrier: it was demonstrated in the last
several months that light can travel faster through a certain substance than
it can in a vacuum. Now I have read (well, attempted to read) some of the
explanations that try to get around the implication that "Einstein's speed
limit" had actually been broken, but they were over my head (in-depth
physics). In my *layman's view*, the speed limit was broken (If not, then
the version of the "universal speed limit" presented to laymen needs to be
revised).
So to wrap this up, to us laymen, a couple "rules" of physics have recently
been overturned: (1) heat has been shown to able to flow from cold to hot and
(2) something can travel faster than the speed of light through a vacuum.
Since one of these deals with an *apparent* violation of thermodynamics, at
least it seemed partially related to our discussions.
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