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Irreversibility and Equilibrium in Biological Systems (5004 words) |
 | Irreversibility refers to a process -or a conceptualization of a process- of which we cannot trace all the intervals or trajectories. |
| Irreversibility is understood as the inexistence of laws for the microscopic processes that at a specified point could originate a reversal in the trajectory of time; this is to say, that some processes cannot be traced backward without generating flanking irreversible processes. |
| Irreversibility exists in natural processes externally to our knowledge, whether we imagine it or not, or if we are able to project it in mathematical models or not. |
| Irreversibility (1033 words) |
| The usual way to describe the effects of irreversible or dissipative processes at the kinetic level is to add a collision term (of one form or another) to the Liouville equation (2.3) to obtain a Boltzmann equation. |
| A characteristic feature of irreversible systems is the existence of stable stationary states, which can be either the equilibrium state or a nonequilibrium steady state if the system is driven by an external agency. |
| The irreversible open-system model permits a wide variety of phenomena to be described at least qualitatively without invoking a collision term. |
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