RE: Joule and Carnot are either laughing or turning in their graves

-----Original Message-----
Behalf Of Nuno P Barradas

>The first crucial point is that neither law 1 nor law 2 or thermodynamics
>apply to Earth.

OK Nuno, I'll bite.  On what planet does the Carnot Cycle apply?

>The second crucial point is that neither law 1 nor law 2 apply to any given
>region of Earth.

[snip]

>Thermodynamics systems are by definition, closed and physical.  "Life on
>Earth" is not a physical system in it's entirity, nor does it meet the
>defintion of a closed system.

You are out of date Nuno.  Nowadays, thermodynamic systems are "isolated",
"closed", and "open".

THERMODYNAMIC SYSTEMS:
#1 Isolated systems do not exchange energy or matter with the exterior.
#2 Closed systems exchange energy wityh the exterior but not matter.
#3 Open systems exchange both energy and matter with the exterior.

[p.p., 4,5,  MODERN THERMODYNAMICS:
>From Heat Engines to Dissipative Structures
Dilip Kondepudi & Ilya Prigogine, Wiley, 1998 ]

----------------------------------------------------

Prigogine won a Nobel for applying  thermodynamics to open systems:

"The third possible category is that in which systems are far from thermal
and chemical equilibrium. Such systems are nonlinear and pass through
indeterminate phases. They do not tend toward minimum free energy and
maximum specific entropy but amplify certain fluctuations and evolve toward
a new dynamic regime that is radically different from stationary states at
or near equilibrium.

"Prima facie the evolution of systems in the far-from-equilibrium state
appears to contradict the famous Second Law of Thermodynamics. How can
systems actually increase their level of complexity and organization, and
become more energetic? The Second Law states that in any isolated system
organization and structure tend to disappear, to be replaced by uniformity
and randomness. Contemporary scientists know that evolving systems are not
isolated, and thus that the Second Law does not fully describe what takes
place in them—more precisely, between them and their environment. Systems in
the third category are always and necessarily open systems, so that change
of entropy within them is not determined uniquely by irreversible internal
processes. Internal processes within them do obey the Second Law: free
energy, once expanded, is unavailable to perform further work. But energy
available to perform further work can be "imported" by open systems from
their environment: there can be a transport of free energy -- or negative
entropy -- across the system boundaries. * When the two quantities -- the
free
energy within the system, and the free energy transported across the system
boundaries from the environment -- balance and offset each other, the system
is
in a steady (i.e., in a stationary) state. As in a dynamic environment the
two terms seldom balance each other for any extended period of time, in the
real world systems are at best "metastable": they tend to fluctuate around
the states that define their steady states, rather than settle into them
without further variation.

footnote:

* Change in the entropy of the systems is defined by the well-known
Prigogine equation dS = djS + deS Here dS is the total change of entropy in
the system, while djS is the entropy changed produced by irreversible
processes within it and deS is the entropy transported across the system
boundaries. In an isolated system dS is always positive, for it is uniquely
determined by djS, which necessarily grows as the system performs work.
However, in an open system deS can offset the entropy produced within the
system and may even exceed it. Thus dS in an open system need not be
positive: it can be zero or negative. The open system can be in a stationary
state (dS = 0), or it can grow and complexity (dS < 0). Entropy change in
such a system is given by the equation deS - djS < 0); that is, the entropy
produced by irreversible processes within the system is shifted into the
environment. [p.p. 106-107, VISION 2020, Laszlo; Gordon and Breach, 1994,
212-206-8900 ISBN 2-88124-612-5 ]

Jay