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From: G.ZEEP@MIT-EECS
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Thermodynamics (Heat Death and other myths)
Message-ID: <3223@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Sat, 10-Aug-85 15:39:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3223
Posted: Sat Aug 10 15:39:36 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Aug-85 02:09:19 EDT
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Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: Wang Zeep 

I'd hate to give people a long lecture on thermodynamics, but basically,
unless you've taken a real thermo+stat. mech. course, you probably
aren't aware of the basic limitations of thermodynamics.

In a nutshell:

Thermodynamics (classical) developed from experiments on systems ranging
in size from millions of atoms to (say) the solar system.  It's not clear
entropy describes anything at sizes larger or smaller than the experimental
range, or at extremes of temperature, pressure, etc.

Don't bet on "heat death."  Thermo just can't be scaled up to universe sized
systems.

Remember:  Thermo is for comparison purposes only, and your entropy may
vary.


				wz
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