Comment by theamk
4 years ago
This is pretty meaningless argument though. Ok, maybe it does not contradict the second law of thermodynamics. It still contradicts the conservation of energy though, and that's what matters!
(It also does not contradict law of conservation of momentum, Boltzmann law, and San Francisco parking rules. Who cares?)
The abstract doesn't appear to me to say anything about violating known physical law.
They are claiming it all works as theory predicts, I think.
What is missing for me is an explanation why this is in fact interesting to a layperson.
"At room temperature, micron-sized sheets of freestanding graphene are in constant motion, even in the presence of an applied bias voltage. We quantify the out-of-plane movement by collecting the displacement current using a nearby small-area metal electrode and present an Ito-Langevin model for the motion coupled to a circuit containing diodes. Numerical simulations show that the system reaches thermal equilibrium and the average rates of heat and work provided by stochastic thermodynamics tend quickly to zero. However, there is power dissipated by the load resistor, and its time average is exactly equal to the power supplied by the thermal bath."
I guess it sounds like they are saying the graphene is all wibbly-wobbly at room temperature, and applying a kind of damping mechanism temporarily produces power. Very temporarily.
I'm not quite sure why this should or should not be possible. If they say it's initially not at equilibrium though, that means they aren't suggesting new physics, right?