Earth's Spin-Orbit Dynamics Provide the Physical Origin of Our Thermodynamic Constants and Impose a Chiral Asymmetry on Earthbound Frames
Every thermodynamic constant was derived from an Earthbound reference frame sharing three rotational motions: Earth's spin, its orbit about the Earth-Moon barycenter, and its annual revolution about the Sun. When the kinetic theory of gases was formulated, these motions were suppressed - particle motion was ‘linear’ and referenced to a center-of-mass imagined to be at rest. This simplification wove an Earthlab-at-rest perspective into both the dynamical equations and the constants fitted to them, while erasing a fundamental asymmetry associated with the prograde sense of all three rotations. No theory yet acknowledges the role this non-linear motion may have played in shaping the value of those constants. This paper demonstrates that Boltzmann's constant, the universal gas constant, the Kelvin temperature scale, and the reduced Planck constant all emerge as structural consequences of overlooked dynamics in the Earth-Moon spin-orbit system. Specifically, Boltzmann's constant is shown to equal the inverse reduced mass of the Earth-Moon system. The unit Kelvin maps to the bound kinetic energy carried per hydrogen atom in our system. The universal gas constant emerges as the logarithmic ratio of two geopotential equilibria operating simultaneously along Earth’s geoid. The reduced Planck constant is shown to reflect the inverse of an extra angular momentum carried by particles forced to spin around both Earth's center of mass and the Earth-Moon barycenter Once the dynamic asymmetry underlying Earth’s lab frame is woven back into our energy equations, an explanation for Pasteur’s 170-year-old enigma about chirality emerges as a natural consequence of Earth’s spin-orbit dynamics.
Authors
- Steve Thorne (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5003-4557)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
- Published
- 2026-09-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22218990
- Primary Topic
- Origins and Evolution of Life
- Type
- preprint