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Claims of exceptions to the second law of thermodynamics are generally met with extreme skepticism that is quite reasonable given the great confidence placed in the second law. But what specifically is the basis for that confidence? The…
In the scientific and engineering literature, the second law of thermodynamics is expressed in terms of the behavior of entropy in reversible and irreversible processes. According to the prevailing statistical mechanics interpretation the…
For macroscopic systems, the second law of thermodynamics establishes an inequality between the amount of work performed on a system in contact with a thermal reservoir, and the change in its free energy. For microscopic systems, this…
The microscopic explanation of entropy has been challenged from both experimental and theoretical point of view. The expression of entropy is derived from the first law of thermodynamics indicating that entropy or the second law of…
The first part of this paper is a condensed synthesis of the matter presented in several previous ones. It begins with an argumentation showing that the first and second laws of thermodynamics are incompatible with one another if they are…
Even though the second law of thermodynamics holds the supreme position among the laws of nature, as stated by many distinguished scientists, notably Eddington and Einstein, its position appears to be also quite peculiar. Given the atomic…
There are several formulations of the second law, and they may, in principle, have different domains of validity. Here a simple mathematical theorem is proven which serves as the most general basis for the second law, namely the Thomson…
Second law of thermodynamics is applied to a few electronic processes. It is seen that the second law of thermodynamics holds good for all except one mentioned here. The classical approach, based on exact equivalence of emission and…
We investigate the validity of the generalized second law of thermodynamics, in the cosmological scenario where dark energy interacts with both dark matter and radiation. Calculating separately the entropy variation for each fluid component…
The aim of this article is to analyze the relation between the second law of thermodynamics and the so-called arrow of time. For this purpose, a number of different aspects in this arrow of time are distinguished, in particular those of…
Thermodynamics, and in particular its first law, is of fundamental importance to Science, and therefore of great general interest to all physicists. The first law, although undoubtedly true, and believed by everyone to be true because of…
In a macroscopic (quantum or classical) Hamiltonian system, we prove the second law of thermodynamics in the forms of the minimum work principle and the law of entropy increase, under the assumption that the initial state is described by a…
In a previous paper [1] we considered the question, "What underlying property of nature is responsible for the second law?" A simple answer can be stated in terms of information: The fundamental loss of information gives rise to the second…
A version of the second law of thermodynamics states that one cannot lower the energy of an isolated system by a cyclic operation. We prove this law without introducing statistical ensembles and by resorting only to quantum mechanics. We…
Even after over 150 years of discussion, the interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics continues to be a source of confusion and controversy in physics. This confusion has been accentuated by recent challenges to the second law and…
While Fourier's law is empirically confirmed for many substances and over an extremely wide range of thermodynamic parameters, a convincing microscopic derivation still poses difficulties. With current machines the solution of Newton's…
The second law of thermodynamics is asymmetric with respect to time as it says that the entropy of the universe must have been lower in the past and will be higher in the future. How this time-asymmetric law arises from the time-symmetric…
We proved when random-variable fluctuations obey the central limit theorem the equality of the uncertainty relation corresponds to the thermodynamic equilibrium state. The inequality corresponds to the thermodynamic non-equilibrium state.…
The essential postulates of classical thermodynamics are formulated, from which the second law is deduced as the principle of increase of entropy in irreversible adiabatic processes that take one equilibrium state to another. The entropy…
This paper is a non-technical, informal presentation of our theory of the second law of thermodynamics as a law that is independent of statistical mechanics and that is derivable solely from certain simple assumptions about adiabatic…