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How the Scientific Community Reacts to Violations of the Second Lawof Thermodynamics



 
 
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  #1  
Old March 12th 17, 01:54 PM posted to sci.astro
Pentcho Valev
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Default How the Scientific Community Reacts to Violations of the Second Lawof Thermodynamics

There was a sensation in 2012 - researchers had described a graphene-based device converting ambient heat into electricity, in violation of the second law of thermodynamics. Yet only the technological aspects were discussed - the violation of the second law was not mentioned in either the original paper or the numerous comments:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/4...ctric-current/
"Graphene Battery Turns Ambient Heat Into Electric Current. Physicists have built a graphene battery that harvests energy from the thermal movement of ions in solution."

http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.0161
Self-Charged Graphene Battery Harvests Electricity from Thermal Energy of the Environment, Zihan Xu et al: "Moreover, the thermal velocity of ions can be maintained by the external environment, which means it is unlimited. However, little study has been reported on converting the ionic thermal energy into electricity. Here we present a graphene device with asymmetric electrodes configuration to capture such ionic thermal energy and convert it into electricity. [...] To exclude the possibility of chemical reaction, we performed control experiments... [...] In conclusion, we could not find any evidences that support the opinion that the induced voltage came from chemical reaction. The mechanism for electricity generation by graphene in solution is a pure physical process..."

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/03...y-device..html
Natu "Although materials scientist Yury Gogotsi of Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, doubts the latest claim, he points out that the mystery should at least be relatively easy to clear up. "The device described by Xu's group is very simple and numerous labs can easily repeat this experiment to check the validity of the results," he says. [...] Comments are closed."

Comments were really closed in 2012, and if any labs have checked the validity of the results, they have done it secretly.

In 2013 Zihan Xu and co published a similar paper, in a prestigious journal, and this time the violation of the second law WAS mentioned. However any violation of the second law of thermodynamics acts like the face of Medusa the Gorgon - on seeing it, the scientific community gets paralyzed and unable to react. So the second paper did not become a sensation - there were no comments at all:

http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip...1063/1.4825269
Electricity generated from ambient heat across a silicon surface, Guoan Tai, Zihan Xu, and Jinsong Liu, Appl. Phys. Lett. 103, 163902 (2013): "We report generation of electricity from the limitless thermal motion of ions across a two-dimensional (2D) silicon (Si) surface at room temperature. [...] ....limitless ambient heat, which is universally present in the form of kinetic energy from molecular, particle, and ion sources, has not yet been reported to generate electricity. [...] This study provides insights into the development of self-charging technologies to harvest energy from ambient heat, and the power output is comparable to several environmental energy harvesting techniques such as ZnO nanogenerator, liquid and gas flow-induced electricity generation across carbon nanotube thin films and graphene, although this remains a challenge to the second law of thermodynamics..."

Pentcho Valev
  #2  
Old March 12th 17, 10:35 PM posted to sci.astro
Pentcho Valev
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Default How the Scientific Community Reacts to Violations of the SecondLaw of Thermodynamics

"For 50 years scientists have seen in experiments that some monomers and dimers split apart and rejoin at different rates on different surfaces. The eureka moment came when we recognized that by placing two different surfaces close together in a way that effectively eliminates the gas cloud, the energy balance would be different on each of the two surfaces. One surface would have more molecules breaking apart, cooling it, while the other surface would have more molecules joining back together, warming it." https://www.facebook.com/ParadigmEne...49600938581128

That is, for 50 years scientists have known that catalysts can shift the equilibrium, in violation of the second law of thermodynamics. And what? Nothing. Just crimestop:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwe...hapter2.9.html
"Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity."

Pentcho Valev
  #3  
Old March 13th 17, 08:37 AM posted to sci.astro
Pentcho Valev
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Posts: 8,078
Default How the Scientific Community Reacts to Violations of the SecondLaw of Thermodynamics

Phys. Rev. E 88, 032125 - Published 18 September 2013: "It is shown that a standard principle of traditional catalysis - that a catalyst does not alter the final thermodynamic equilibrium of a reaction - can fail in low-pressure, heterogeneous gas-surface reactions." http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...RevE.88.032125

This, if true, marks the end of the second law of thermodynamics. No reaction at all from the scientific community.

When it comes to questioning the second law of thermodynamics, the crimestop is even more absolute than when Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate is questioned. Scientists feel that they may somehow survive without "spacetime", but life without "entropy" seems absolutely impossible to them:

http://web.mit.edu/keenansymposium/o...und/index.html
Arthur Eddington: "The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."

Pentcho Valev
  #4  
Old March 13th 17, 06:59 PM posted to sci.astro
Pentcho Valev
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Posts: 8,078
Default How the Scientific Community Reacts to Violations of the SecondLaw of Thermodynamics

Violations of the second law of thermodynamics would be regarded as commonplace if it were not for misleading education:

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."

So the scientific community learns that a heat engine ALWAYS has two heat reservoirs, hot and cold:

http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfadd/1360/2...s/Fig22.01.jpg

Isothermal (only one heat reservoir) heat engines are either ignored or presented as impossible by thermodynamics educators and as a result the scientific community believes that they do not exist:

http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfadd/1360/2...s/Fig22.03.jpg

Actually heat engines functioning in isothermal conditions (only one heat reservoir) - e.g. the work-producing force is activated by some chemical agent, not by heating - are commonplace. They all violate the second law of thermodynamics. I have already given enough examples.

Pentcho Valev
 




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