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Origin of Life Obfuscated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics



 
 
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Old August 17th 17, 08:13 PM posted to sci.astro
Pentcho Valev
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Default Origin of Life Obfuscated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics

"The biophysicist Jeremy England made waves in 2013 with a new theory that cast the origin of life as an inevitable outcome of thermodynamics. His equations suggested that under certain conditions, groups of atoms will naturally restructure themselves so as to burn more and more energy, facilitating the incessant dispersal of energy and the rise of "entropy" or disorder in the universe. England said this restructuring effect, which he calls dissipation-driven adaptation, fosters the growth of complex structures, including living things. [...] Often, the system settles into an equilibrium state, where it has a balanced concentration of chemicals and reactions that just as often go one way as the reverse. This tendency to equilibrate, like a cup of coffee cooling to room temperature, is the most familiar outcome of the second law of thermodynamics, which says that energy constantly spreads and the entropy of the universe always increases. (The second law is true because there are more ways for energy to be spread out among particles than to be concentrated, so as particles move around and interact, the odds favor their energy becoming increasingly shared.)" https://www.quantamagazine.org/first...life-20170726/

This "tendency to equilibrate" occurs only in the absence of conservative fields. If, for instance, water is placed in an electric field, the opposite tendency dominates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17UD1goTFhQ
"The Formation of the Floating Water Bridge including electric breakdowns"

Generally, 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

Pentcho Valev
  #2  
Old August 18th 17, 11:27 AM posted to sci.astro
Pentcho Valev
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Posts: 8,078
Default Origin of Life Obfuscated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics

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 remain unnoticed - one of the reasons is that they are too slow and impuissant to be of any technological importance. Except, perhaps, for the case where water is placed in an electric field - the non-conservative force (pressure) that emerges between the cathode and the anode seems to be quite vigorous:

http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teachin...es/node46.html
"However, in experiments in which a capacitor is submerged in a dielectric liquid the force per unit area exerted by one plate on another is observed to decrease... [...] This apparent paradox can be explained by taking into account the difference in liquid pressure in the field filled space between the plates and the field free region outside the capacitor."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6KAH1JpdPg
Liquid Dielectric Capacitor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17UD1goTFhQ
"The Formation of the Floating Water Bridge including electric breakdowns" x

The following quotations partially explain why it is so difficult to see the numerous violations of the second law of thermodynamics:

Clifford Truesdell, The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics, 1822-1854, p. 6: "Finally, I confess to a heartfelt hope - very slender but tough - that even some thermodynamicists of the old tribe will study this book, master the contents, and so share in my discovery: Thermodynamics need never have been the Dismal Swamp of Obscurity that from the first it was and that today in common instruction it is; in consequence, it need not so remain." [....] p. 333: "Clausius' verbal statement of the "Second Law" makes no sense, for "some other change connected therewith" introduces two new and unexplained concepts: "other change" and "connection" of changes. Neither of these finds any place in Clausius' formal structure. All that remains is a Mosaic prohibition. A century of philosophers and journalists have acclaimed this commandment; a century of mathematicians have shuddered and averted their eyes from the unclean." https://www.amazon.com/Tragicomical-.../dp/1461394465

Jos Uffink, Bluff your way in the Second Law of Thermodynamics: "I therefore argue for the view that the second law has nothing to do with the arrow of time. [...] Before one can claim that acquaintance with the Second Law is as indispensable to a cultural education as Macbeth or Hamlet, it should obviously be clear what this law states. This question is surprisingly difficult. The Second Law made its appearance in physics around 1850, but a half century later it was already surrounded by so much confusion that the British Association for the Advancement of Science decided to appoint a special committee with the task of providing clarity about the meaning of this law.. However, its final report (Bryan 1891) did not settle the issue. Half a century later, the physicist/philosopher Bridgman still complained that there are almost as many formulations of the second law as there have been discussions of it. And even today, the Second Law remains so obscure that it continues to attract new efforts at clarification." http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/313/1/engtot.pdf

Pentcho Valev
 




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