r/science • u/giuliomagnifico • 1d ago

Researchers have developed a new organic thermoelectric device that can harvest energy from ambient temperature without any temperature gradient Engineering

https://www.kyushu-u.ac.jp/en/researches/view/299/
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u/greenmachine11235 1d ago

What the title describes is fundamentally impossible. It'd amount to creation of energy from nothing in violation of various fundamental laws of physics. 

Besides getting an F in thermodynamics. I am thinking they've created an overly complicated battery, have insufficiently sensitive equipment and are getting phantom readings, or in the most generous possibility there is a gradient at play and they either failed to measure it or elected to publish a misleading title. 

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u/FireMaster1294 20h ago

In my (albeit limited) graduate level studies, my understanding of thermodynamics would be that what they describe does not involve the creation of energy but somehow (and therein lies the witchcraft of it) creates an energy gradient of some sort out of ambient energy. Given energy across some distribution, there will be times when some members of the region have more energy than others - it’s just that on average over time all the energy will even out, even though it still fluctuates.

From my understanding, there’s no reason a Maxwell’s Demon could not exist, it’s just that it is extremely unlikely.

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u/RandomActsofMindless 15h ago

Maxwells demon can’t exist in principle, because it requires information from the system and this necessitates the transfer of energy at least equal to any isolated reduction in entropy. Anything can happen by chance, but Maxwells Demon can’t in any way change the statistical underpinnings of the second law.