Experimental Demonstrations of Violations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics

发明家和工程师努力将机器、设备和引擎缩小到纳米尺寸，以用于一系列技术目的，科学家研究蛋白质马达，以了解它们的运作，希望改变它们的生物行为。 然而，根据非平衡统计力学中的一个新定理，这种按比例缩小的引擎有一个基本的限制：这种纳米机器，包括蛋白质马达，将在相当长的时间内“反向”运行，违反热力学第二定律。 我们建议使用光镊装置的实验来证明这种不可避免的，在纳米技术的操作限制。

Inventors and engineers strive to scale-down machines, devices and engines to nanometre sizes for a range of technological purposes and scientists investigate protein motors to understand their operation in hopes of modifying their biological behaviour. However, according to a new theorem in Non-equilibrium Statistical Mechanics, there is a fundamental limit to this scaling-down of engines: such nanomachines, including protein motors, will run in "reverse" for appreciable amounts of time and in violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. We propose to demonstrate this inescapable, operational limit in nanotechnology with experiments using an Optical Tweezers apparatus.