3 ms·
What about Maxwell demon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon ?
by Egregore 13y ago
What about Maxwell demon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon ?
- ctdonath 13y agoMaxwell's Demon applies to heat in the form of brownian motion. What donquichotte suggests applies to radio waves in the infrared band, basically creating a crystal radio running off light. We colloquially equate infrared to thermal heat because the former induces physical motion in atoms. And the suggestion is stark raving awesome.
- comicjk 13y agoIt's far from just colloquial. Infrared and thermal motion at the same temperature contain the same amount of exergy, meaning that the thermodynamic limits on how much work they can do are the same.