It is hoped that this treatise will also help demystify some recent challenges of the Second Law of thermodynamics and promote constructive future debates. The following essentials are vitally critical since they encompass, irrespective of the system and process details, all space and time scales: (1) the “ reversible equivalency” implies that if the Second Law can be violated in any unique way, then it would be universally violated, and (2) forcing is directional and “ forced directionality” imply irreversibility, i.e., process impossibility in the opposite direction. In addition to language semantics, there are many perplexing issues related to the very essence of thermodynamics, especially the Second Law fundamentals, its subtle definitions and ambiguous meanings of key concepts, including the nature of heat and entropy. We are still to witness a single, still open Second Law violation, to be confirmed. In fact, all resolved challengers’ paradoxes and misleading violations of the Second Law to date have been resolved in favor of the Second Law and never against. Entropy destruction would imply spontaneous increase in non-equilibrium, with mass-energy flux displacement against cause-and-effect, natural forces, as well as negate the reversible existence of the very equilibrium. Creation of ordered structures or live species always dissipate useful energy and generate entropy, without exception, and thus without Second Law violation. Furthermore, entropy cannot be destroyed by any means at any scale (entropy is conserved in ideal, reversible processes and irreversibly generated in real processes), and thus, entropy cannot overall decrease, but only overall increase.

It is phenomenologically reasoned here that non-equilibrium, useful work-energy potential is always dissipated to heat, and thus thermodynamic entropy (a measure of thermal disorder, not any other disorder) is generated always and everywhere, at any scale without exception, including life processes, open systems, micro-fluctuations, gravity or entanglement. Fascination with challenging the Second Law has further accelerated throughout the development of statistical and quantum physics, and information theory. The challenges and claims of hypothetical violations of the Second Law of thermodynamics have been a topic of many scientific, philosophical and social publications, even in the most prestigious scientific journals.

Does entropy increase with temperature