[E. Pluribus Unum]

I bet this will be as reproducible as cold fusion.

[DarthFuzball]

Entropy sucks. But not like it used to.

[Cicero]

I'd like to see a few other people repeat the experiment.

[sonofatpatcher2]

They'll take away my Second Law of Thermodynamics

from my cold, dead fingers!

[greenwolf]

Let me know when somebody gets a bowling ball to roll up a hill...

[FairOpinion]

"The researchers discovered that in such a tiny system, entropy can sometimes decrease rather than increase. "

===

If they can prove this, the consequences can be remarkable.

[Mr. Mojo]

Ping

[RS]

"Beads of Doubt: Second Law of Thermodynamics Untrue?"

I KNEW It ! I didn't flunk that test after all !

[RS]

"Beads of Doubt: Second Law of Thermodynamics Untrue?"

I KNEW It ! I didn't flunk that test after all !

[Steely Tom]

Human beings decrease the entropy of the universe.

(steely)

[the invisib1e hand]

i always thought the contradiction bewteen evolution and entropy was a hoot...no matter how much sophistry academia spews to whitewash it, one argues against the other.

[jwalsh07]

This effect was seen when the researchers looked at the bead's behaviour for a tenth of a second. Any longer and the effect was lost.

The second law is the turtle.

[John Beresford Tipton]

Does this make it more likely that Hell *CAN* freeze over?

[FreedomCalls]

The Second Law states that the entropy - or disorder - of a closed system always increases.

/Later/

The container holding the beads was then moved from side to side a thousand times a second so that the trapped bead would be dragged first one way and then the other.

The researchers discovered that in such a tiny system, entropy can sometimes decrease rather than increase.

THAT'S NOT A CLOSED SYSTEM! It is having energy input into it via the shaking mechanism. In fact, it is having substantial energy put into it. Motion is kinetic energy.

[Muleteam1]

>>So much so that there is a common adage that if anyone has a theory that violates the Second Law then, without any discussion, that theory must certainly be wrong.<<

Funny how this knowledge has never hindered the teaching of the theory of biological evolution, a theory where biological systems supposedly ignore entropy. Everything else in our existence rusts, corrodes, decays, spoils, ruins, declines, or falls apart, but life somehow has evolved from the simplistic (a single cell) to the complex (an organism). Go figure.

Muleteam1

[11B3]

The article conveniently forgets to state the rest of the 2nd Law: Without an input of energy everything reverts to its' lowest energy state.

I fail to see from this experiment how they've disproved the law at all. They added energy to the system.

[tet68]

I had my doubts about those beads, but when she started pulling them out, it was THERMODYNAMIC for sure~!

Reversed my sense of direction for weeks.

[TC Rider]

I had a very small car that ran better backwards when going uphill.

[Nick Danger]

So for very short periods of time, time can run backwards. Wouldn't that make any period containing some of those instants seem longer?

Now that I think about it, I have been in closed conference rooms where this happened. The guy kept droning on and on, and I kept having the sensation that I'd heard it all before. Whoa! Maybe I had! This explains why a meeting that only took an hour seemed like days.

[Old Professer]

Sh*t; it's still two months to Groundhog Day.