Related papers: The Second Law and Cosmology

The 2nd law of thermodynamics yields an irreversible increase in entropy until thermal equilibrium is achieved. This irreversible increase is often assumed to require large and complex systems to emerge from the reversible microscopic laws…

In this paper we have considered the holographic dark energy and studied it's cosmology and thermodynamics. We have analysed the generalized second law (GSL) of thermodynamics in a flat universe consists of interacting dark energy and dark…

In a previous work (M. Campisi. Stud. Hist. Phil. M. P. 36 (2005) 275-290) we have addressed the mechanical foundations of equilibrium thermodynamics on the basis of the Generalized Helmholtz Theorem. It was found that the volume entropy…

While purely philosophical in the early times, and still very speculative at the beginning of the twentieth century, Cosmology has gradually entered into the realm of experimental science over the past eighty years. It has raised some…

Curiously, our Universe was born in a low entropy state, with abundant free energy to power stars and life. The form that this free energy takes is usually thought to be gravitational: the Universe is almost perfectly smooth, and so can…

Thermodynamics allows the application of Statistical Mechanics to finite and even small systems. As surface effects cannot be scaled away, one has to be careful with the standard arguments of splitting a system into two or bringing two…

Why in our Universe the laws of thermodynamics are valid? In the paper is demonstrated the reason of it: if the time and the space are multifractal and the Universe is in an equilibrium state the laws of the thermodynamics are consequences…

This article provides answers to the questions posed in the title. Contrary to the most common views, we show that neither the entropy, nor the Second Law may be used for either living systems, or to life phenomenon.

When thermodynamics is understood as the science (or art) of constructing effective models of natural phenomena by choosing a minimal level of description capable of capturing the essential features of the physical reality of interest, the…

The entropy of the observable universe is increasing. Thus, at earlier times the entropy was lower. However, the cosmic microwave background radiation reveals an apparently high entropy universe close to thermal and chemical equilibrium. A…

Deriving the laws of thermodynamics from a microscopic picture is a central quest of statistical mechanics. This tutorial focuses on the derivation of the first and second law for closed and open quantum systems far from equilibrium, where…

When the difference between changes in energy and entropy at a given temperature is correlated with the ratio between the same changes in energy and entropy at zero average free energy of an ensemble of similar but distinct molecule-sized…

The generalized second law of gravitational thermodynamics is applied to the present era of accelerated expansion of the Universe. In spite of the fact that the entropy of matter and relic gravitational waves inside the event horizon…

Homogeneous and isotropic, nonsingular, bouncing world models are designed to evade the initial singularity at the beginning of the cosmic expansion. Here, we study the thermodynamics of the subset of these models governed by general…

How did it all begin? Although this question has undoubtedly lingered for as long as humans have walked the Earth, the answer still eludes us. Yet since my grandparents were born, scientists have been able to refine this question to a…

I review various proposals for the nature of black hole entropy and for the mechanism behind the operation of the generalized second law. I stress the merits of entanglement entropy {\tenit qua\/} black hole entropy, and point out that,…

For more seventy years physicists have appreciated that Nature's vacuum is far from empty. The discovery of the Lamb shift in Hydrogen provided dramatic verification of the reality of the quantum vacuum. The advent of gauge theories has led…

The second law of thermodynamics constitutes a fundamental principle of physics, precluding the existence of perpetual motion machines and providing a natural definition of the arrow of time. Its scope extends across virtually all areas of…

Applying Clausius relation with energy-supply defined by the unified first law of thermodynamics formalism to the apparent horizon of a massive cosmological model proposed lately, the corrected entropic formula of the apparent horizon is…

We investigate the validity of the generalized second law of thermodynamics in a universe governed by Horava-Lifshitz gravity. Under the equilibrium assumption, that is in the late-time cosmological regime, we calculate separately the…