Laws of Thermodynamics

[ÆNIMA]

"Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather..."

-Bill Hicks

[DoTheFandango]

EXCEPT WE ARE NOT HERE! WE ARE IN TEH MATRICKS!!!

DTF, a chain reaction and "creating energy" are completely different. You're still not creating it because, in your own words, it is being released from the atoms.

This is what I don't understand. I may just be a n00b, but if the atoms make more atoms in fission, isn't it it making more energy? I mean the atoms have to come from somewhere, and they weren't there to begin with.

[geekbot]

You all are all messed up.

Matter and Energy are the same but in different forms. If a little bit of matter could be converted into energy it would be a LOT of energy. This is NOT what happens in fission nor fusion.

Fission is the breaking of an atom into multiple, smaller atoms. The energy released comes from the binding energy that used to hold the nucleons (proton/neutrons) together. In other words, energy that held nucleons together no longer holds them together and is released (no energy is created). (No mass is created either- multiple, smaller atoms vs one bigger atom.)

Black holes do not create or destroy matter/energy either. They are massive concentrations of matter with a gravitational pull so large that light/matter does not escape it. The escape velocity for matter exceeds light so matter and light are not observed exiting it's gravitational pull. Again, matter/energy isn't created/destroyed. It's sucked in and can't leave.

Perhaps you are thinking of *wormholes* which are theoretical tunnels through space-time. Matter/energy might leave (or tunnel elsewhere in space-time). But these are theoretical and exist "outside" space-time anyway.

Back to the original question: there are currently no answers to the "creation" of matter-energy, just as there are no answers to the "creation" of space-time. The answers lie outside of even the basic assumptions so they have to be answered by a set of even "greater" laws that include beginning/end of these.

Personally, for the creation of time-space, I like Genesis 1:1,2. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

For matter-energy, I like Genesis 1:3,4. "And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness."

(Light of course is probably the most tangible form of energy for a non-scientific audience.)

[ÆNIMA]

Fusion is the combining of atoms.
Fission is the splitting of atoms.
All nuclear energy as we have experienced in our history is a result of fission. I could pull up a periodical table and show you that uranium has an atomic number of 92. That means it has 92 protons. Hyrdogen has 1 proton.

When you split a uranium atom, you make two more atoms, only smaller and in that split you lose a little weight. Just like whenever you transfer energy, some energy is lost. So in the fission (or splitting) process that energy which is lost is the same energy we use to run nuclear reactors and blow up A-Bombs.

So when you split up atoms, you just make more atoms, only smaller. Much like when you split up worms, you make more worms...only smaller ones.

The sun works the opposite. It fuses atoms, it takes 2 atoms (2 hydrogen) and makes one atom (1 helium).

Fusion is believed among many physicists to be the most efficient way to create (or harness) energy. The only problem is that we don't know how to efficiently do so without wasting all sorts of other energy. That's why you read about cold fusion mainly only in science fiction novels. Cold fusion is a physicist's wet dream. Whoever discovers how to create cold fusion will probably not receive a Nobel Peace Price, but he'll have his own prize named after him.

[!cER]

Heh, the title of this thread caught my eye as I am meant to be cramming for my thermal physics exam that is in less than 12 hours.

My favourite big bang theory has to be the borrowing potential energy from the future one...at undergraduate level it goes something like this:

A particle and its opposing anti-particle can just 'appear' in totally empty space...just like that. Obviously this requires energy, so it seems pretty counter-intutitive. However these particles have opposite charges and are created pretty much on top of one another, so within a fraction of a second (I am am talking VERY small timescales here) they collide and annihilate with each other, re-imbursing the universe with its 'borrowed' energy. This phenemonon has actually been measured, I am not making this stuff up (it is actually for blackholes radiate away energy and causes a thing called the Casimir force)...Anyway, the lifespan, and probablity of these is inversely proportional to the the size of the particle it creates. So you can't just have a planet and an anti-planet just randomly creating and destroying themselves all over the place, and even if they did they wouldn't stick around for very long. I can't remember exactly how they then go on to explan the big bang from this. I think it was a (half) universe and an anti-(half)universe at one point in space and the anti-universe decays into a matter particle before it has time to collide (as anti-matter decays more often than matter...explaining the imbalance between the two in the observable universe). The probability of this happening is finite, but infintesimally small.

Hmm, it doesn't sound quite right, now I read it back, heh and it doesn't make much sense so sorry if I have confused people with my random 2am panic revision procrastination ramblings. I am going to slink away again now...

Edit: Just saw the post above about cold fusion...Never quite understood that concept. Fusion power is about creating energy, energy that power plants harness by using the HEAT to create high pressure steam and drive turbines to creat electricity...now how can 'cold' fusion be creating energy that we use?

Edit2: Back to the original big bang thing I was waffling on about (I realised I missed a point)...if the theory I was on about is correct then the universe doesn't actually have any energy, it is all just 'borrowed' from the the future when it all destroys itself again.

[DoTheFandango]

Sigh. That's why I take Mechanical Physics.

[Bob (SRB)]

I don't think the big bang theory violates that law. The singularity that was the universe before the big bang contained about an infinite amount of mass and energy, so nothing was created or destroyed when the big bang happened.

[geekbot]

Cold Fusion:

For any energy source to be usable it has to be viable (generates more energy than is put in and in a form that can be havested and distributed). And by generates more energy than goes in we're really talking about money. If a reaction requires $100 of material and energy to generate $25 of usable energy you might as well keep the $100.

Combining the right atoms in fusion releases energy. For instance, the sun is a giant ball of fusion releasing heat and light, all for you, how nice. If we could do that on earth and use the heat to boil water and turn a steam turbine we'd be set. But so far, all attempts put more heat in that what comes out. The fake holy grail of fusion is cold fusion. That's fusion that happens at room temperature so all that's required is materials. I'm betting this one's not happening. Nature doesn't give energy away that easily.

[Fluffz]

I think it was a (half) universe and an anti-(half)universe at one point in space and the anti-universe decays into a matter particle before it has time to collide (as anti-matter decays more often than matter...explaining the imbalance between the two in the observable universe). The probability of this happening is finite, but infintesimally small.

eh? one anti matter universe decays into one matter particle. i disagree antimatter and matter have the same lifespan, however, it seems like - out of unknown reason - that antimatter bosons interact with neutral bosons(or some other particle, im not sure) more often than matter ones (interaction sure happened often in the early Big Bang time, thats why there is so much more energy than matter floating around).

When a particle encounters its antiparticle, the two annihilate each other, and a situation of pure energy arises that immediately disintegrates, for example into two photons. Such a situation of pure energy can also lead to the creation of a particle-antiparticle combination. This happened on a very large scale at the time of the big bang. In the first nanoseconds following the big bang the energy density of the universe was so high, that photons and other, heavy gauge bosons started to interact in large numbers and formed quark-antiquark pairs. In the decay of the neutral Z boson quarks and antiquarks of the same type are produced, but in the decay of the charged W boson the quarks can be different, although we still habe a quark-antiquark pair, e.g. an up-anti-down pair. The up-quark has a charge of 2/3e, the antidown-quark has charge 1/3e, so that the charge is neatly conserved in the reaction (e stands for the charge of an electron) Quarks and antiquarks do not exist freely, and so they bound themselves together in protons and neutrons as the universe expanded and cooled off and so gradually the universe evolved as we know it today.

however, this is not drastical enough to explain the imbalace of matter and antimatter until today.

but if there was a lot of energy in the beginning, where did it come from? at some point there had to be an huge energy input into our universe, so termodynamic laws are not violated. what caused that is more a philosophy question than a physic one. might have been god or a colapsing universe, a time loop, the paradoxon that nothing can not define itself without some kind of existence, alternative universes creating each other, etc, etc. all of those require that there has to be some sort of always existing, well at least rules everything is defined in. some sort of think that has no start and no end and makes sense in itself, and also can define and describe itself. some perfect thing.

[Vykromond]

This would make sense if not for the fact that we're actually here.

what

[!cER]

eh? one anti matter universe decays into one matter particle. i disagree antimatter and matter have the same lifespan, however, it seems like - out of unknown reason - that antimatter bosons interact with neutral bosons(or some other particle, im not sure) more often than matter ones (interaction sure happened often in the early Big Bang time, thats why there is so much more energy than matter floating around).


however, this is not drastical enough to explain the imbalace of matter and antimatter until today.

but if there was a lot of energy in the beginning, where did it come from? at some point there had to be an huge energy input into our universe, so termodynamic laws are not violated. what caused that is more a philosophy question than a physic one. might have been god or a colapsing universe, a time loop, the paradoxon that nothing can not define itself without some kind of existence, alternative universes creating each other, etc, etc. all of those require that there has to be some sort of always existing, well at least rules everything is defined in. some sort of think that has no start and no end and makes sense in itself, and also can define and describe itself. some perfect thing.

A quick google search lead me to this article:

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/8/8/1

backs up what I was taught, I believe there is pretty strong evidence that anti-matter decays in matter faster than the other way, but most big-bang theory is guesswork anyway.

And yes I do believe the 'rules' have always been there. How they got there is not a wuestion for science to answer.

Edit: heh the next one down on the google search has a slightly less jargon infested explantation:

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/00/bfactbg124.html

[Fit of Rage]

Thank you Geekbot for saying exactly everything I was going to say. B)

[!cER]

Cold Fusion:

For any energy source to be usable it has to be viable (generates more energy than is put in and in a form that can be havested and distributed). And by generates more energy than goes in we're really talking about money. If a reaction requires $100 of material and energy to generate $25 of usable energy you might as well keep the $100.

Combining the right atoms in fusion releases energy. For instance, the sun is a giant ball of fusion releasing heat and light, all for you, how nice. If we could do that on earth and use the heat to boil water and turn a steam turbine we'd be set. But so far, all attempts put more heat in that what comes out. The fake holy grail of fusion is cold fusion. That's fusion that happens at room temperature so all that's required is materials. I'm betting this one's not happening. Nature doesn't give energy away that easily.

That isn't quite the diffiuclty the people working on fusion are having. IT doesn't much matter if it is economical, because the price of electricity will increase, especailly when coal runs out in about 100 years and natural gas in about 40 (that is assuming China doesn't start swallowing it all). The problem with current fusion technology is maintain the reaction so we don't have to put ENERGY in. Basically the reactors that exist at the moment have to be powered...which defeats the point really. Although I think they are building a new test one in France, I think it is due to be complete in about 2020 or something.

[Jeenyuss]

one answer, two words, three syllables

big titties.

[Lethe]

The best fusion reactor of them all: