Basis and Soundness of the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Dr. Alexey Nikulov
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The question of the soundness of the second law of thermodynamics is of great fundamental and practical importance. Much in modern science is based on this law, and its violation can allow to solve the world’s energy problems at one stroke. The basis of this law testifies to the important if not decisive role of faith in science, which most scientists tend to deny. Sadi Carnot had based in 1824 his principle on the centuries-old faith in the impossibility of a perpetual motion machine. We call the Carnot principle as the second law of thermodynamics since Clausius’s time. This faith cannot have a scientific basis, since over several centuries of its domination, the ideas about physical processes have changed radically several times. Heat was considered as a fluid – phlogiston until the middle of the 19th century. Heat became to be considered a type of energy in the second half of the 19th century. But supporters of the thermodynamic-energy worldview denied the existence of atoms and their perpetual thermal motion up to the 20th century because of the contradiction between the reversibility of physical laws and the irreversibility postulated by the second law of thermodynamics.
A perpetual motion machine would be inevitable according to the law of energy conservation if all physical processes were reversible. The second law of thermodynamics postulates that the process of transformation of any kind of ordered energy into chaotic energy of thermal motion is fundamentally irreversible, i.e. processes reverse to this process are impossible. The only scientific substantiation for this postulate - Boltzmann's H-theorem was questioned by the great scientist Max Planck because of the unfounded assumption of molecular disorder which is the indispensable presupposition of the validity of this theorem. This assumption may be violated in the directed thermal motion of charged particles in a magnetic field , in type-B energetic processes in biological systems , and in quantum phenomena such as the persistent current and the Meissner effect . Other challenges to the second law of thermodynamics are in the book .
This Special Issue focuses on all aspects of basis and soundness of the second law of thermodynamics. Potential topics include, but are not limited to the following one:
The history of the centuries-old faith in the impossibility of a perpetual motion machine as the basis of the second law of thermodynamics.
Changing the arguments for the soundness of the second law of thermodynamics because of the change in ideas about heat.
A perpetual motion machine would be inevitable without the irreversibility postulated by the second law of thermodynamics.
The contradiction between the reversibility of physical laws and the irreversibility postulated by the second law of thermodynamics.
Boltzmann's H-theorem is the only scientific substantiation for the second law of thermodynamics according to the modern idea that heat is a perpetual thermal motion of atoms, molecules, Brownian particles and other microscopic and mesoscopic particles.
The assumption of molecular disorder is the indispensable presupposition of the validity of Boltzmann's H-theorem.
Could experimental evidences of violation of assumption of molecular disorder refute the second law of thermodynamics?
Which of these violations are the most promising for solving the world's energy problems?
Possible scientifically based refutations to challenges to the second law of thermodynamics. The author of the preprint , like most scientists, is sure that the challengers of the second law of thermodynamics have no hope. He and other scientists should explain on what scientific arguments, apart from the belief in the impossibility of a perpetual motion machine, their confidence that the second law of thermodynamics cannot be violated is based.
You are welcome to submit your recent research studies or relevant state-of-the-art reviews on the problems of the second law of thermodynamics. We look forward to your contribution.