
Questioning the Law of Conservation of Energy - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/79/catalysts/is-the-law-of-conservation-of-energy-cancelled
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afthonos
Me: “Questioning the media’s elite-driven narrative” is such a clickbait
headline.

Also me: “Questioning the law of conservation of energy”—aaah, a headline
clearly intended for sophisticates like myself.

(The article itself is good; I’m just amused at my own reaction.)

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tobmlt
Putting aside the quantum aspects of this article for a moment, (not that they
aren't fascinating, but, ...well, one can only think so hard at the end of the
day!) I think this is a good place to link to Sean Carroll's post about the
gravitational aspects of the general issue (for anyone who might not have seen
it):
[https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy-...](https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy-
is-not-conserved/)

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corporate_shi11
I read recently that through the Casimir interaction, heat can be dissipated
in a 'vacuum' as it is transferred to virtual particles. When this happens and
the virtual particles pop back out of existence, do they carry the energy they
absorbed along with them into nonexistence? Or by absorbing energy do they
become real? Would that then mean energy is being created?

~~~
deehouie
some references please

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eesmith
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21770464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21770464)
was posted 20 hours ago on the topic, pointing to
[https://phys.org/news/2019-12-energy-space-quantum-
weirdness...](https://phys.org/news/2019-12-energy-space-quantum-
weirdness.html) .

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
I'm no physicist, but the article says "phonons can indeed be transferred
across a vacuum by invisible quantum fluctuations."

Which is not the same as "heat can be dissipated in a 'vacuum' as it is
transferred to virtual particles."

spot the difference: "transferred across a vacuum" (to some other object) vs.
"dissipated in a vacuum" (to nowhere).

~~~
eesmith
Perhaps physics has a specialized version of "dissipated"? A look at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissipation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissipation)
suggests that's the case.

And perhaps corporate_shi11 is using "dissipated in a vacuum" to mean
"transfer of internal energy from a hotter body to a colder one across a
vacuum"?

 _shrug_ \- I dunno.

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8bitsrule
Energy is a slippery concept. To Wikipedia it's a 'quantitive property' that
'must be transferred to an object.' A _property_. Good luck weighing that, or
nailing it to a tree.

Consider the 'transformation of energy' ... from mechanical to electrical to
acoustical to chemical to potential to kinetic to thermal (end of the line).
What is the 'it' that's being transformed?

In one sense all things are 'energetic' so long as they have a velocity
(relative to something else). We need to keep an eye on boulders up on
hillsides. They're not _moving right now_ ... but their _potential energy_
might be transferred to us, thanks to the equally mysterious 'gravity'.

Yes, the math all seems to work. But we're not quite 'there' yet. Our position
is uncertain.

~~~
robomartin
Is heat really the end of the line? Heat engine to mechanical, etc.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's an interesting question. AFAIU, heat engines don't take energy from
heat, but from heat _difference_. In this sense, heat is like potential energy
- an absolute value is arbitrary and meaningless in isolation, but moving mass
between two points of different potential lets you store or extract energy.

OTOH, from what little I remember from reaction kinetics in chemistry,
temperature there is used as absolute value that determines the chance of
collision between their molecules and the "activation energy", both of which
influence the rate of a chemical reaction. In this space, thermal energy seems
like something absolute.

What gives?

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saagarjha
> In this sense, heat is like potential energy - an absolute value is
> arbitrary and meaningless in isolation

Not quite. Potential is defined with an arbitrary basis as you’ve pointed out,
but with temperature the basis is not arbitrary: it’s chosen for us, and this
value is absolute zero. Taking a temperature difference is not enough to
figure out how well a heat engine will work on it.

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microcolonel
At least this one has a direct title. The other "but what if we ignore
thermodynamics for a moment" articles that pass by HN sometimes bury the lede
a bit.

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feoren
Considered abandoning reading when I saw the ridiculous "if we believe in dark
matter, why not aliens?" headline on the side. Did stop reading when they
started talking about quantum mechanical observations. Is Nautilus just a
Markov generator trained on terrible Quora answers?

~~~
chr1
This is not really fair. The "why not aliens" article is an interview with a
scientist who argues that we should not outright dismiss the possibility that
something (particularly omuamua comet) is alien technology, until we have
proof one way or the other, which is not a ridiculous thing to say.

I also can't see what is particularly wrong with the description of quantum
mechanical observations in this article. It looks to me like a good enough
description of the idea of research done by the author himself.

