On Newton's third law and its symmetry-breaking effects

Abstract

The law of action–reaction, considered by Ernst Mach as the cornerstone of physics, is thoroughly used to derive the conservation laws of linear and angular momentum. However, the conflict between momentum conservation law and Newton's third law, on experimental and theoretical grounds, calls for more attention. We give a background survey of several questions raised by the action–reaction law and, in particular, the role of the physical vacuum is shown to provide an appropriate framework for clarifying the occurrence of possible violations of the action–reaction law. Then, in the framework of statistical mechanics, using a maximizing entropy procedure, we obtain an expression for the general linear momentum of a body particle. The new approach presented here shows that Newton's third law is not verified in systems out of equilibrium due to an additional entropic gradient term present in the particle's momentum.