Maxwell's demon as a self-contained, information-powered refrigerator

Maxwell's demon as a self-contained, information-powered refrigerator
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-maxwell...rigerator.html


In 1867, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell challenged the second
law of thermodynamics according to which entropy in a closed system
must always increase. In his thought experiment, Maxwell took a
closed gas container, divided it into two parts with an inner wall
and provided the wall with a small trap door. By opening and closing
the door, the creature – 'demon' – controlling it could separate slow
cold and fast warm particles to their respective sides, thus creating
a temperature difference in contravention of the laws of
thermodynamics.

On theoretical level, the thought experiment has been an object of
consideration for nearly 150 years, but testing it experimentally has
been impossible until the last few years. Making use of
nanotechnology, scientists from Aalto University have now succeeded
in constructing an autonomous Maxwell's demon that makes it possible
to analyse the microscopic changes in thermodynamics. The research
results were recently published in Physical Review Letters. The work
is part of the forthcoming PhD thesis of MSc Jonne Koski at Aalto
University.


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community, and physics-related social issues.

On Wednesday, January 13, 2016 at 6:45:12 AM UTC-7, Sam Wormley wrote:
Maxwell's demon as a self-contained, information-powered refrigerator
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-maxwell...rigerator.html


In 1867, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell challenged the second
law of thermodynamics according to which entropy in a closed system
must always increase. In his thought experiment, Maxwell took a
closed gas container, divided it into two parts with an inner wall
and provided the wall with a small trap door. By opening and closing
the door, the creature - 'demon' - controlling it could separate slow
cold and fast warm particles to their respective sides, thus creating
a temperature difference in contravention of the laws of
thermodynamics.

On theoretical level, the thought experiment has been an object of
consideration for nearly 150 years, but testing it experimentally has
been impossible until the last few years. Making use of
nanotechnology, scientists from Aalto University have now succeeded
in constructing an autonomous Maxwell's demon that makes it possible
to analyse the microscopic changes in thermodynamics. The research
results were recently published in Physical Review Letters. The work
is part of the forthcoming PhD thesis of MSc Jonne Koski at Aalto
University.

On this general subject...

I had thought that since self-winding watches are powered by the random motion
of the person wearing them -

and Brownian motion is visible from placing small, but visible, objects in
liquids, so those objects are much larger than a molecule,

it would seem as though one could make tiny electrical power generators that
broadcast power by radio that used a self-winding watch mechanism... to convert
heat directly into useful work, in violation of the laws of thermodynamics.

John Savard

On Wednesday, January 13, 2016 at 1:45:12 PM UTC, Sam Wormley wrote:
Maxwell's demon as a self-contained, information-powered refrigerator
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-maxwell...rigerator.html


I am curious about a number of things associated with Maxwell, not so much the man himself but rather how the empiricists in the early 20th century wove him into the narrative separating relativity and Newton.

Of course you now know that the 'scientific method' came in under the radar of the 'theory of gravity' which in itself began as single statement that experimental sciences at a human level scale up to an astronomical level as a direct correlation and not simply as useful analogies -


"Rule III. The qualities of bodies, which admit neither [intensification] nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever." Newton

This horrible notion has been taught through schools for centuries and compounded further by relativity which borrowed the language of absolute/relative and buried humanity deeper in voodoo while understanding nothing of what Newton tried to do.

You hold people like Maxwell in esteem and indeed he was heralded by your own instructors as a key person in the development bridging Newton's agenda with that of the early 20th century even wile those same instructors knew nothing of Newton's approach to astronomy as a mathematicians and not as an astronomer.

Having laid bare the entire sequence of technical details which distinguish what Newton tried to do in contrast to what was actually done by the original heliocentric astronomers I find nobody around to discuss the matter, not even the core principles which set the empirical agenda going and especially that statement known as 'rule 3'.

It is quite an experience to encounter so drastic an ideology without the slightest sign that it is recognized as a destructive notion that it is and regardless how long it has been called an 'achievement'.

Quadibloc:
it would seem as though one could make tiny electrical power generators that
broadcast power by radio that used a self-winding watch mechanism... to
convert
heat directly into useful work, in violation of the laws of thermodynamics.

That wouldn't be converting heat into useful work, it would be the
conversion of kinetic energy into radio waves. As for heat-to-useful
work, the steam engine and the internal combustion engine do a
reasonable job of that. And none of it violates the principles of
thermodynamics.

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm

On Wednesday, January 13, 2016 at 1:18:06 PM UTC-7, Davoud wrote:
Quadibloc:
it would seem as though one could make tiny electrical power generators that
broadcast power by radio that used a self-winding watch mechanism... to
convert
heat directly into useful work, in violation of the laws of thermodynamics.

That wouldn't be converting heat into useful work, it would be the
conversion of kinetic energy into radio waves. As for heat-to-useful
work, the steam engine and the internal combustion engine do a
reasonable job of that. And none of it violates the principles of
thermodynamics.

Steam engines and other devices that exploit the Carnot cycle don't break the
laws of thermodynamics because they produce useful energy by taking heat from a
hot place and and harnessing its flow to a cold place.

But a direct _net_ conversion of heat energy to useful work - taking something
hot, and cooling it off, without making anything else warmer, and getting
useful work from the heat energy you've consumed, is what violates the laws of
thermodynamics.

Converting the kinetic energy of molecules to useful work _is_ in this category
because *that's what heat is*. Now, this may not truly violate the laws of
physics, because statistical mechanics is the truth, and thermodynamics is only
the approximation... but it would seem that it is at least considered so.

John Savard

Newton's followers, including the many here who follow the dummies of the early 20th century, assume that Newton's vocabulary was so contrived and convoluted that they exploited it with the assumption that nobody could challenge it.

"Newton objectivises space. Since he classes his absolute space together with real things, for him rotation relative to an absolute space is also something real. Newton might no less well have called his absolute space "Ether" Einstein

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/...ein_ether.html

While Newton's follower imagine Newton is defining time as absolute/relative time, in actuality he was dithering around with the Equation of Time - the timekeeping facility which distinguishes the average 24 hour day from the variable length of the natural noon cycle. Equally Newton's notion of absolute/relative space was an idiosyncratic mishmash to account for the observed motions of the planets in terms of true/apparent and projecting it into absolute/relative space and motion -

"It is indeed a matter of great difficulty to discover, and
effectually to distinguish, the true motion of particular bodies from
the apparent; because the parts of that absolute space, in which
those motions are performed, do by no means come under the observation
of our senses. Yet the thing is not altogether desperate; for we have
some arguments to guide us, partly from the apparent motions, which
are the differences of the true motions; partly from the forces, which
are the causes and effects of the true motion." Newton


It is unconscionable that the work of the great astronomers, both geocentric and heliocentric, was destroyed by that muck which assumes modeling the Earth as seen from the Earth (relative space and motion) requires a separate modeling as seen from the Sun (absolute space and motion).

There was no such thing as true/apparent motions, absolute/relative motions or any other variation of that rubbish, there were just that judgement that all people have when accounting for the observed motions of the planets and what inputs the Earth's own orbital motions supplies in accounting for those motions -

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap011220.html

Newton's absolute/relative space had nothing to do with 'aether', it had everything to do with the resolution for the observed behavior of the other planets .

"For to the earth planetary motions appear sometimes direct, sometimes
stationary, nay, and sometimes retrograde. But from the sun they are
always seen direct,..." Newton

Any clown can mimic the language of the early 20th century and the contrived narrative that inserts people like Maxwell however all it does it expose how contrived the whole spiel actually is. Want to know what Newton was actually doing and you are all going to have to go through imaging and the actual methods of the astronomers who give so much of their time and effort.

Oops (usual proofreading error) -



It is unconscionable that the work of the great astronomers, both geocentric and heliocentric, was destroyed by that muck which assumes modeling the motions of the other planets as seen from the Earth (relative space and motion) requires a separate modeling as seen from the Sun (absolute space and motion).

On 13/01/2016 18:29, Quadibloc wrote:
On Wednesday, January 13, 2016 at 6:45:12 AM UTC-7, Sam Wormley wrote:
Maxwell's demon as a self-contained, information-powered refrigerator
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-maxwell...rigerator.html


In 1867, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell challenged the second
law of thermodynamics according to which entropy in a closed system
must always increase. In his thought experiment, Maxwell took a
closed gas container, divided it into two parts with an inner wall
and provided the wall with a small trap door. By opening and closing
the door, the creature - 'demon' - controlling it could separate slow
cold and fast warm particles to their respective sides, thus creating
a temperature difference in contravention of the laws of
thermodynamics.

On theoretical level, the thought experiment has been an object of
consideration for nearly 150 years, but testing it experimentally has
been impossible until the last few years. Making use of
nanotechnology, scientists from Aalto University have now succeeded
in constructing an autonomous Maxwell's demon that makes it possible
to analyse the microscopic changes in thermodynamics. The research
results were recently published in Physical Review Letters. The work
is part of the forthcoming PhD thesis of MSc Jonne Koski at Aalto
University.

The snag is your demon has to do a lot of work moving the trapdoor no
matter how small you make it. Entropy always wins in the end.

On this general subject...

I had thought that since self-winding watches are powered by the random motion
of the person wearing them -

Not a random motion of the person wearing them - the pendulum motion of
the arm as they walk along. If you have such a watch and do not wear it
every day you may need to own a "watch winder" to keep it going!

and Brownian motion is visible from placing small, but visible, objects in
liquids, so those objects are much larger than a molecule,

Brownian motion is still random so you can't derive useful power from it
although you can see pollen grains bouncing around.

it would seem as though one could make tiny electrical power generators that
broadcast power by radio that used a self-winding watch mechanism... to convert
heat directly into useful work, in violation of the laws of thermodynamics.

You can try but the second law of thermodynamics will be working against
you. Put simply you can't win and you can only break even under
exceptional circumstances that almost never occur in practice.

That is why most patent offices have stopped considering bogus patents
for any kind of perpetual motion machine (even the USPTO).

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On Thursday, January 14, 2016 at 10:43:57 AM UTC, Martin Brown wrote:

You can try but the second law of thermodynamics will be working against
you.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Empiricism sucks astronomy into 'laws' with all the legalistic jargon of evidence, proof etc common to the judicial profession as though fair minded men are considering an issue

The is no 'law of gravity', there was the meek ideology of a rule bumped up to the jargon of a law by Newton and his followers using the notion that the distinction between experimental analogies and large scale astronomical structure and planetary motions can be obliterated.

"Rule III. The qualities of bodies, which admit neither [intensification] nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever." Newton

Ask the cult followers of this ideology how the fall of a simple apple equates to the motion of the Earth around the Sun and with the solar system through space in its galactic orbital motion and they are lost apart from spewing worthless jargon.

It is well that you all found the most mediocre participant to set yourselves apart even when the narrative of the parasitic relationship of empiricism to astronomy and terrestrial sciences is there for reasonable people to discuss. Far from the dullards and gloom of things wearing out and breaking down are the great cycles of the planets and the ever present renewal of life during a daily and annual cycle and it is this that astronomers need to refocus their attention and away from worthless nonsense that has long since passed it novelistic stage.