The second law of thermodynamics concerns the irreversibility of natural and technical processes, and its simplest form, formulated by German physicist Clausius, states that heat can never spontaneously pass from a colder body to a warmer body.
According to the second law of thermodynamics and Carnot's theorem (which introduced the concept of the ideal engine), it is not possible for an ideal system that operates with an ideal fluid to convert all the energy absorbed into work.
Investigation on irreversible systems started back in 1789, when Benjamin Thompson highlighted that mechanic friction generates heat. In 1852, Lord Kelvin developed Carnot's results and stated that the heat due to irreversibility is an irreversible process; there is a universal tendency to the dissipation of mechanical energy into heat; and the heat wasted isn't really wasted, but only a flux of heat from any open systems towards their environments. In 1865, Rudolf Clausius introduced the concept of entropy to analyse the dissipative processes while in 1872, Austrian physicist Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann tried to address irreversibility by using statistical and probabilistic arguments processed by using the H theorem, which was very much criticized (Loschmidt and Zermelo).
Then, several physicists have studied and investigated irreversibility in thermodynamics: Louis Georges Gouy, Aurel Stodola, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Albert Einstein and Erwing Schrödinger.
Umberto Lucia, Department of Energy of Polytechnic University of Turin, has recently published a paper in Scientific Reports, based on a study by a team of researchers of Technical and Industrial Physics of the Polytechnic University of Turin on research carried out in the field of thermodynamics of irreversible systems for application to nanosystems in biochemistry, biophysics and biomedical engineering.
The study carried out by the Polytechnic University of Turin showed analytically, for the first time, that the interaction between thermal radiation and the matter changes atomic or molecular internal layers with consequent microscopic irreversibility, obtaining an analytical formulation which allows for a quantitative assessment of the effects and expressing – through the Schrödinger equation – the change in the atomic states of hydrogenoid atoms.
The result achieved by the Polytechnic University of Turin shows that the assumptions made by Einstein, Schrödinger and Gibbs on atomic irreversibility caused by electromagnetic interactions; states the assumption by Doyle (astrophysicist and current vice-dean at Harvard) on electromagnetic irreversibility of thermal radiation, and therefore of system-environment thermal unbalance; and proposes a formulation for Schrödinger equation extended to irreversible systems.
Source
According to the second law of thermodynamics and Carnot's theorem (which introduced the concept of the ideal engine), it is not possible for an ideal system that operates with an ideal fluid to convert all the energy absorbed into work.
Investigation on irreversible systems started back in 1789, when Benjamin Thompson highlighted that mechanic friction generates heat. In 1852, Lord Kelvin developed Carnot's results and stated that the heat due to irreversibility is an irreversible process; there is a universal tendency to the dissipation of mechanical energy into heat; and the heat wasted isn't really wasted, but only a flux of heat from any open systems towards their environments. In 1865, Rudolf Clausius introduced the concept of entropy to analyse the dissipative processes while in 1872, Austrian physicist Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann tried to address irreversibility by using statistical and probabilistic arguments processed by using the H theorem, which was very much criticized (Loschmidt and Zermelo).
Then, several physicists have studied and investigated irreversibility in thermodynamics: Louis Georges Gouy, Aurel Stodola, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Albert Einstein and Erwing Schrödinger.
Umberto Lucia, Department of Energy of Polytechnic University of Turin, has recently published a paper in Scientific Reports, based on a study by a team of researchers of Technical and Industrial Physics of the Polytechnic University of Turin on research carried out in the field of thermodynamics of irreversible systems for application to nanosystems in biochemistry, biophysics and biomedical engineering.
The study carried out by the Polytechnic University of Turin showed analytically, for the first time, that the interaction between thermal radiation and the matter changes atomic or molecular internal layers with consequent microscopic irreversibility, obtaining an analytical formulation which allows for a quantitative assessment of the effects and expressing – through the Schrödinger equation – the change in the atomic states of hydrogenoid atoms.
The result achieved by the Polytechnic University of Turin shows that the assumptions made by Einstein, Schrödinger and Gibbs on atomic irreversibility caused by electromagnetic interactions; states the assumption by Doyle (astrophysicist and current vice-dean at Harvard) on electromagnetic irreversibility of thermal radiation, and therefore of system-environment thermal unbalance; and proposes a formulation for Schrödinger equation extended to irreversible systems.
Source
