xastorm

I think the major losses from the plasma are radiation losses, thermal Bremsstrahlung, in that case plasma is not losing energy because the surrounding medium have a lower temperature, am I right? assuming that such a low energy plasma will be optically thin enough to allow most of the radiated energy, which would have low frequency, to pass through it without re-absorption. the point now is that plasma will get radiant energy from the surroundings to balance these losses, since it is surrounded by black bodies, so a thermal equilibrium occurs. if we tried to make a one way shield for radiation, so that we block surrounding radiation be reflecting them, the shield itself would act as a black body and lose energy by radiation to the plasma, and then it will absorb energy from the surroundings, so plasma would get as much heat as it loses again. so what defends the second law is: we can't stop black bodies from absorbing and losing radiation to get to attain thermal equilibrium. I think case closed

well, I'm not trying to make a crank violation of the second law, but this is a kind of thought experiment, I am assuming we created a gas that ionizes at room temperature due to the thermal energy of the atmosphere alone, although far from existence, there is no connection between the validity of the second law and the ability to create such a kind of gas, Or there is? well, my assumption is: we have some type of gas which becomes a plasma at -say- 0 degrees, you need no energy input to make plasma in the first place because the thermal energy in the atmosphere is enough to ionize our gas and turn it into plasma, so, whatever energy you get it won't be useless, if you could harness only 1% of the radiated power you have absorbed some energy from the atmosphere, thus deviated from thermal equilibrium without exerting external work, which necessarily violates the second law of thermodynamics.

suppose we have a gas that becomes completely ionized at room temperature, only energy in atmospheric gases are enough to convert it into plasma, since plasma loses energy by radiation to the surroundings, we could harness the generated electromagnetic energy violating the second law of thermodynamics.