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Comment by pwr-electronics | Hacker News Reader

Nothing breaks the laws of thermodynamics, ever.

I assume you're referring to how some popular science articles report things. That's just wordplay. Nothing is being bent, broken, or bypassed.

Usually it just means they did something an ordinary homogeneous material couldn't do, for example. Which is genuinely interesting, even if it's not actually breaking physics.

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With a generous interpretation, they can be said to break classical thermodynamics, since they quantum physics onto the table, most notably magnets can have negative temperature according to the statistical definition. Nothing that breaks physics at large, but would probably cause Ludwig Boltzmann a mild headache if he heard about it.

It's still not going to allow you to make perpetual motion machines, though.

Why would you use a classical model to describe a quantum system? That's the kind of wordplay that those articles do, and almost identical to my example about materials. It's entertaining, but meaningless.

Well in this case you absolutely can, the results just seem counter to our intuition about temperature. Negative temperature is a meaningful description of these types of systems.

I'm trying to explain how articles often conflate "intuition" with "breaking physics", and you're making your argument by conflating them. We're having different conversations.

Where have I said anything about any of this breaking physics, other than repeatedly clarifying that it doesn't...?

> With a generous interpretation, they can be said to break classical thermodynamics

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31008263

Operative word being classical. Quantum physics breaks classical physics. Stopped being controversial about a hundred years ago.

Thw very same comment specifically states that physics itself is not broken.

Ok, so you're confirming that you're doing exactly what I said popular science articles often do.

No I am not. Breaking classical physics is not breaking physics.

I'm running out of ways to explain myself, so I'll just reword and summarize this thread from my perspective:

OC: Is it broken?

Me: No, they make generous interpretations to claim that it's broken.

You: With a generous interpretation, they can be said to break ...

Like I said, we're not having the same conversation.

This is just sophistry. You're omitting the crucial context of what it is in these sentences, and it is only when this is done they appear contradictory.

Of course there are contradictions. I'm talking about journalistic style in magazines. You're talking about something else.

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