1206.4783 (Jose A. Magpantay)

Microscopic Irreversibility and the H Theorem    [PDF]

Jose A. Magpantay

Time-reversal had always been assumed to be a symmetry of classical physics. In this paper we will show that this is only true for a system that can be isolated completely, i.e., does not have any interaction with the environment at all, thus not a realistic system. First, we will argue from current physics that the universe dynamics is not time-reversal invariant. Second, we will argue that any thermodynamic system cannot be isolated completely from the universe, thus making the system dynamics also not time-reversal invariant, although very weakly. Since time-reversal is no longer a symmetry of realistic systems, the problem of how macroscopic irreversibility arises from microscopic reversibility becomes irrelevant because there is no longer microscopic reversibility. We then show that the H Theorem of Boltzmann is still valid even without microscopic reversibility. We do this by deriving a modified H Theorem. which still shows entropy monotonically increasing. With this proof, we remove Loschmidt's objection to Boltzmann's ideas.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.4783