tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post7380682850250749611..comments2024-03-28T00:11:33.489-04:00Comments on bensozia: Quantum ThermodynamicsJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-32380175128763156462017-04-01T20:07:28.861-04:002017-04-01T20:07:28.861-04:00The laws of thermodynamics are only "laws&quo...The laws of thermodynamics are only "laws" because they've always been observed to be true. If you can verifiably demonstrate a situation in which they do not apply, then there you have it - they're only mostly true, not always true.<br /><br />Part of the problem might just be scale, and the way our limits on our ability to observe things shapes our perceptions of something "always" being true.<br /><br />For example, Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation was (and still is) treated as a scientific "law", because under ordinary conditions, the calculations "always" hold true. But it turns out that at extreme scales, the theory begins to show small margins of error. When operating at cosmic scales or at quantum scales, the formula begins to produce ever so slightly wrong results. This led to developments such as Einstein's theory of General Relativity, among others, working to explain the discrepancies.<br /><br />So what's stopping the three "laws" of Thermodynamics from being similarly flawed?<br /><br />What if, under certain extreme conditions, it actually <i><b>is</b></i> possible for energy to be created or destroyed? We only believe this to be impossible because we've "always" observed it to be so. But what if 99.999999999999999999999999999+% of the time, it's impossible... but in incredibly rare situations, it actually can happen - even if just at incredibly small scales or rates?<br /><br />Of course, it's could just as easily turn out to be that, if we do find evidence of something happening that we would lead us to <i>think</i> energy has been "destroyed", in fact the energy simply changed state in a way that we cannot yet detect. But how would we know the difference?<br /><br />What does it even mean for something to be "destroyed"? You could argue that nothing ever truly gets destroyed, because the component parts always remain, just in some other arrangement. But isn't a big part of our very conception of "destruction" the notion that a desired arrangement has been changed or lost?<br /><br />If you split an atom, do you actually destroy it? It's component parts still exist - but can the atom itself be said to exist? We used to believe the atom was indivisible - because we had "always" observed this to be so. But then we found the extreme circumstances where it isn't.<br /><br />Compare to energy. We believe a quantum to be "indivisibile", because we've always observed it to be so.But what if you actually can "destroy" quanta, breaking them into yet unknown component parts? And what if those parts can't yet be detected? We wouldn't be able to determine whether we had violated the conservation of energy or not. We would lack the observational data to know one way or the other whether the "law" is wrong, or if it is right and we just aren't able to detect the results.G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.com