Public enemy no. 1

Thermodynamics

Rampant slavery, officially endorsed racism, forced labour, forced marriages, disenfranchisement of women – in eras gone by it used to be things like these that dragged people down. In our day it is thermodynamics that is preventing the human race from realizing its true potential.

Therm means ‘heat’ and dynamics means ‘motion’. Combined, the two Greek words roughly translate to: ‘this world sucks’. Some lexicographers argue that a closer English translation is: ‘you can’t become a saviour overnight’. Which, in a world crawling with villains of different sizes and numbers and where saviours couldn’t be in higher demand, makes thermo – as it is dreadfully referred to by science and engineering students – a great villain itself.

In total there are four laws of thermodynamics. To be fair, not all are evil. The zeroth law, which is about thermometers, is benign to the extent of being homoeopathic. The third law – which, had the thermodynamics community counted properly and started from one, should have been the fourth – asserts the impossibility of cooling something to absolute zero (-273.15 degrees Celsius). That’s all right because nobody in his right mind actually relishes the prospect of a holiday in such a clime. The real damage to the cause of humanity is caused by the first and the second law. There’s an ongoing debate as to which of the two is more misanthropic; up until filing of the last report the second law was winning – by a nose.

In layman terms, the first law states that you need to first put something in the bank before being able to withdraw it. According to the second law, if something sounds too good to be true, it is. The irony here is lost on most scientists. Science, which prides itself on its culture of cultivating an open mind instead of believing in dogmas, is shamelessly promoting a closed mind here. If there is a better advertisement for pessimism, I am not aware of it. These life-sucking laws obviously need to be rebelled against.

A few years ago I attended a session of an energy sector NGO. An eminent speaker was asked to present his views regarding the solution of Pakistan’s energy problems. Being an economist, he was refreshingly unburdened by the malignant laws of thermodynamics. By way of demonstrating the abundance of available options, he cited a foreign country – I am not sure but it may have been Burundi – where they were ingeniously pumping water to overhead tanks and then releasing it to produce electricity. The audience’s delight was palpable. Before thermodynamics reared its ugly head that is. As if on cue, somebody in the audience stood up and said something about the second law and negative net energy output, sucking the very air out of the hall.

Thanks to the efforts by some free spirits, on a number of occasions our energy problems have come very close to being solved. I will cite only two recent examples. Agha Waqar’s water-kit showed great initial promise before being thwarted by thermodynamics. Rehan Aziz’s generator that needed 5 litres of water instead of 10 litres of petrol brought us on the verge of breakthrough. This effort was also frustrated by, you guessed it… thermodynamics. The two gentlemen may have failed, but their mission was without doubt a noble one. I have enough trust in our talented youth to believe that it is only a matter of time before we hear good news.

The potential demolisher of thermodynamics laws, whenever he arrives, will have a heroic spirit; he will be resilient enough to face all the skepticism that is sure to come his way. He will be the kind of person who is never willing to throw in the towel. Above all, he will have unshakable faith in his eventual success. Belief in miracles will be a great help. And he will need all the support and encouragement that he can get from his countrymen. This is the least we owe our future generations. Our saviour will need to avoid the mistake made by his otherwise excellent predecessors, namely, trying to innovate from inside the overall framework of thermodynamics. Instead, he will have to come up with a completely out-of-the-box solution. In this regard, our atomic expert Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood showed the way, many years ago, when he announced that he could solve the energy crisis using captured djinns. Unfortunately, he could not give a demonstration – probably more pressing activities consumed all his time.

Just as slavery, racism, forced labour, and the societies based on these evils, were challenged and ultimately defeated by daring rebels, I have no doubt that the draconian laws of thermodynamics must also fall one day. Rejoice, for soon we will be living in a world where these laws will have been consigned to the past where they belong. Till that day comes, the quest for the holy grail of perpetual motion goes on…