Paul wrote:
I really don't see it that way. The carbon resistor is made of atoms containing charged particles. The noise is relative to the temperature of the charged particles.
Neither do I. I was trying to illustrate that assigning the noise source to the radiation resistance itself or some other thing such as the E-M radiation that is bouncing around in it, is similar to trying to separate the resistance of the conductive paths in a resistor from the electrons that are bouncing along them. We don't know what the aether is made of, but we do know that it supports electromagnetic waves and fluctuations. The spectrum of these fluctuations can be used to assign it a black body temperature. The temperature of deepest darkest space determined by this spectrum comes out around 2.7K. If the same measurement was done in a lab it would indicate an "aether black body temperature" of ~300K. If you attempt to couple to this aether with an antenna, then this radiation temperature will comes in through your antenna and the radiation resistance seen by the circuit looks identical to a ~300K warm resistor.
Why are you interject flicker noise with this example? It's thermal noise.
I have tried several times to educate you to the fact that the extra (or excess) noise found in carbon resistors is _not_ true thermal noise but is produced by DC current passing through the resistor. Why don't you read the wiki for yourself? Here is what it says: "Flicker noise is found in carbon composition resistors, where it is referred to as excess noise, since it increases the overall noise level above the thermal noise level, which is present in all resistors. In contrast, wire-wound resistors have the least amount of flicker noise. Since flicker noise is related to the level of DC, if the current is kept low, thermal noise will be the predominant effect in the resistor, and the type of resistor used will not affect noise levels." Please note the last phrase: "the type of resistor used will not affect the noise levels". Maybe you wish to disagree with common experimental knowledge? If so you should provide some reference for your as yet baseless assertion. If you are right, then it would be true that you could beat the 2nd law! But you wouldn't need an antenna - simply connecting two resistors with different thermal noise generation levels electrically would be sufficient to create a temperature difference between them in an otherwise uniform ambient.
