- About the Lecture
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About the Lecture
The nine panelists set out to address, very briefly, some of the key questions of the symposium.
Seth Lloyd discusses the Maxwell demon paradox and the spin-echo effect, and how in some cases, in an apparent violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics “entropy goes up and whoa, goes down then up.” He notes that when the laws of thermodynamics appear not to be true, “we simply revise our opinions and re-describe” them, which is “a pathetic situation.”
Owen Maroney invokes “straightforward statistical mechanical assumptions” in his discussion of whether “something can violate the Second Law or not,” and raises Szilard’s engine and Landauer’s erasure principle.
Silviu Guiasu aims to show there is no contradiction between microscopic reversibility of classical mechanics, as described by Hamilton’s equations of motion, and macroscopic irreversibility as described by the increase of entropy.
Ping Ao believes the dynamics behind Darwinian evolution “provide a natural framework” for thermodynamics, and it remains to translate “global statements to precise mathematical language.”
Jochen Gemmer discusses bubbles in Hilbert space, while examining how we might overcome the apparent contradiction between quantum dynamics and thermodynamics.
Bernard Guy focuses on the link between the Second Law and the problem of time, seeking clues for understanding the opposition of reversibility and irreversibility. He sees clashing constructs of time and space in the separate worlds of cognitivists and physicists.
Gian Paulo Berretta praises the seminal work and “pioneering intuition” of Keenan and Hatsopoulos, which inspires new answers to such fundamental issues as whether entropy is an intrinsic property of matter, and if irreversibility is an intrinsic feature of microscopic dynamics.
Speranta Gheorghiu-Svirschevski believes a nonlinear approach can help reconcile the Second Law and quantum evolution. In particular, she looks for ways to “reconcile locality and separability,” while acknowledging that general wisdom says it’s not exactly possible.
Dorion Sagan says that “ever since Darwin, life has been considered an exception to the Second Law.” On the contrary, “entropy, rather, energy spread, and evolution are inextricably linked.” Sagan suggests that “life may just be another energy spreading system,” and “death is the name we give the inevitable disruption of a specific part of life’s network.”Related Videos
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Frontiers of the Second Law
Adrian Bejan, Bjarne Andresen, Miguel Rubi, Signe Kjelstrup, David Jou, Miroslav Grmela, Lyndsay Gordon, Eric Schneider and George Hatsopoulos
October 4, 2007
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Teaching the Second Law
Joseph Smith, Howard Butler, Andrew Foley, Kim Hamad-Schifferli, Bernhardt Trout, Jeffrey Lewins, Enzo Zanchini and Michael von Spakovsky
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The Second Law and Energy
Steven Chu
October 5, 2007
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- About the Speakers
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About the Speakers
Moderator: Robert J. Silbey
Class of 1942 Professor of Chemistry
Robert J. Silbey joined the MIT faculty as an Assistant Professor in 1966. He became Head of the Chemistry Department in 1990-1995. He was appointed Director of the Center for Materials Science & Engineering in 1998. He served as Dean of the School of Science from 2000-2007. Silbey's primary research concerns the theoretical studies of a) the low temperature thermal properties of glasses, b) energy and electron transfer and relaxation in molecular aggregates, c) the optical and electronic properties of conjugated polymers and d) in collaboration with Professor Field, the dynamics of highly vibrationally excited molecules.
Silbey has received numerous teaching awards at MIT, and has lectured extensively throughout the world. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1965.Seth Lloyd
Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Systems, Engineering Systems Division, MIT
Seth Lloyd received a Ph.D. in Physics from Rockefeller University, under the supervision of Heinz Pagels.
He was a postdoctoral fellow in the High Energy Physics Department at the California Institute of Technology, where he worked with Murray Gell-Mann on applications of information to quantum-mechanical systems. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he worked at the Center for Nonlinear Systems on quantum computation. Since 1988, Lloyd has also been an adjunct faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute.
br> Lloyd is a principal investigator at the Research Laboratory of Electronics. He has performed seminal work in the fields of quantum computation and quantum communications, including proposing the first technologically feasible design for a quantum computer, demonstrating the viability of quantum analog computation, proving quantum analogs of Shannon's noisy channel theorem, and designing novel methods for quantum error correction and noise reduction.
Lloyd is a member of the American Physical Society and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.Owen Maroney
Post doctoral researcher, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
Associate Research Fellow, Birkbeck College, LondonSilviu Guiasu
Professor Emeritus, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, York University
Ping Ao
Research Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington
Jochen Gemmer
Arbeitsgruppe Quantenthermodynamik, University of Osnabrueck
Bernard Guy
Professor, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Etienne
Gian Paolo Beretta SM '80, SCD '82
Professor, Università di Brescia
Visiting Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, MITSperanta Gheorghiu-Svirschevski
Research Fellow, Department of Infectious Diseases and Geographical Medicine, Tufts-New England Medical Center
Dorion Sagan
General Partner, Sciencewriters;
Co-director, Sciencewriters Books, Chelsea-Green Publishing - About the Host
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About the Host
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Video Player
Foundations of the Second Law
- Moderator: Robert J. Silbey
- Seth Lloyd
Owen Maroney
Silviu Guiasu
Ping Ao
Jochen Gemmer
Bernard Guy
Gian Paolo Beretta SM '80, SCD '82
Speranta Gheorghiu-Svirschevski
Dorion Sagan - October 4, 2007
- Running Time: 1:30:44
