There's a Loophole in One of the Most Important Laws of Physics

The laws of thermodynamics are cornerstones of physics - but one of them is more breakable than it appears.

Hosted by: Olivia Gordon

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[arvindraghavan]

*this will be fixed in the upcoming patch*

[trevortempleton]

Zaphod: “That’s impossible!” Trillian: “No, just very, very improbable.”

[theedwardian]

imagine being that person whose glass of water froze at room temperature for NO REASON

[coldhazzard]

Does that mean entropy is so disorderly it hits itself sometimes?

[EugeneKhutoryansky]

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is actually one of the few concepts from classical physics that have survived the advent of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. In this sense, it is even more fundamental than most of the other concepts we consider to be fundamental. The fact that it is statistical does not take away from this, as Quantum Mechanics states that nature on the most fundamental level is itself probabilistic, with seemingly impossible events having non-zero probabilities.

[RoyRogersMcFreely]

I thought the second law of thermodynamics is YOU DON’T TALK ABOUT THERMODYNAMICS.

[tchevrier]

I've never liked using "order and disorder" as the definition of entropy. I find it over simplistic and very misleading. You can have random processes such as crystal formation that clearly go from a disordered state to an ordered state, but that doesn't mean that entropy is decreasing.

[TheTexas]

*Break the laws of the physics with this one weird trick! Scientists hate this!*

[kittybeans]

How to cheat physics: Wait a while to get lucky for a tenth of a second.

[GeneralPurposeVehicl]

"This nano battery is running way longer than expected."

[whatyearisit]

That's like saying, "Hey, even a broken clock shows the correct time twice a day!"

[glenngriffon]

In this house we obey the laws of *thermodynamics* !

[DGItAL_CVTS]

_Maxwell's Demon grins ominously in the corner_

[jrhndrl]

Isn’t this just why we say that in the universe order “tends” toward disorder?

[junkerzn]

I don't think there is a loophole here. The situations you describe are information boundary problems, which basically translate to: The apparent temporary reduction in entropy is a statistical/random process and recovering that energy requires sufficient knowledge of that process to be able to predict when the situation occurs. The energy cost of obtaining this knowledge exceeds the recoverable energy. At least so far. That's the basic problem.

A better way to describe it is that you have an atomic-scale grating dividing two sides of the glass of water made of molecule-sized gates which only allow the randomly moving molecules of water to through in one direction. Even if the cost of opening and closing the gate is zero, the cost of acquiring the information required to predict when a particle is about to hit it, in order to open the gate at that instant, is not zero.

So far nobody has been able to come up with any mechanism that is able to overcome this problem.

On the scale of the universe the problem is easier to define... its another boundary problem, with the big bang on one side and the heat death of the universe on the other. The law holds within this period. The law says nothing about what happens before or afterwords. It could very well be that the universe can recycle once the last particle of matter (or most of it) has decayed and time no longer has any meaning (because there is nothing left capable of interacting), but that is outside the bounds of the law.

-Matt

[CoughE]

Y'all ever just *_break the laws of physics_*

[cortster]

0:38 A nitpick, but it should be a 'closed system'. Very important distinction.

[kiamoore]

We should arrest those Atoms..







They are breaking the law.

[ismailabdelirada]

Physics *is* probabilistic at quantum scales.

Hoping to exploit "loopholes" in the Second Law of Thermodynamics applying to small groups of particles for rare, brief periods is sort of like telling a mathematician that 9.999... is not equal to 10.

[Taikamuna]

Oh I absolutely hate it when I accidentally break the laws of physics