Anyone remember this story?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2135779.stm

Does anyone know what has come from this?

the second law of thermodynamics is a law of probabilities. for macroscopic systems, the probabilities are so high as to make the law inviolable. for microscopic systems, the law is no longer so sacred, and for systems with only a few particles, the law is just not true. because of the statistical derivation of this law, the fact that it is not true on a microscopic system is a fact that was expected to be true, theoretically, and this article you have posted tells us that it was indeed verified experimentally.

the fact that the article paints a picture like the foundations of physics are crumbling is a common feature in popular press articles about physics. that is simply not the case. i long ago learned not to take anything seriously that i read about physics in nonscientific news sources (phys rev or such)

Hi Adam, lethe,

Apart from that, there are (were) also some questions on whether this experiment met the exact conditions of the second law (isolated system with spontaneous evolution). And aside from that, I still wonder how exactly they managed to measure the entropy... there are probably also some dubious assumptions there aswel :D.

But the main point is indeed Lethe's, the second law is only true on the average (this is where the statistics and large number of particles come in), and if you take a small number of particles, then the statistics simply won't work anymore (or if you like, the variance is a lot larger than for large systems ;)).

Bye!

Crisp

Just an aside....lethe, why do you consider Physics Review as non-scientific news source? Are those on its editorial board not adequately qualified?

I've not read Physics Review before. Your opinion can help me to decide if it's worth checking out or not.

sorry, i meant that physics letters or physics review are reputable journals and a good scientific news source, as opposed to, say, scientific american.