Natu "But thermodynamics is paradoxical. The second law, which also puts limits on how efficiently heat can be converted into work - as happens in a steam engine - is particularly controversial."
http://www.nature.com/news/battle-be...ats-up-1.21720

"Particularly controversial" and yet there is no controversy at all - complete silence surrounds this 19th century wisdom. The second law of thermodynamics has long been under suspicion but a red herring deviating the attention to small, microscopic, quantum etc. systems has been very powerful so far:

Natu "Second law broken. Researchers have shown for the first time that, on the level of thousands of atoms and molecules, fleeting energy increases violate the second law of thermodynamics."
http://www.nature.com/news/2002/0207...s020722-2.html

The truth is that MACROSCOPIC heat engines violating the second law of thermodynamics are COMMONPLACE. But here misleading education is the problem:

http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/py105/Heatengines.html
"A necessary component of a heat engine, then, is that two temperatures are involved. At one stage the system is heated, at another it is cooled."

This is simply not true. There are heat engines functioning in ISOTHERMAL conditions - e.g. the work-producing force is activated by some chemical agent, not by heating.

All isothermal heat engines, except for analogs of ideal gas systems, can violate the second law of thermodynamics. Examples can be found he

http://www.network54.com/Forum/30471...st-1502324805/
Isothermal Heat Engines Violate The Second Law of Thermodynamics

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