Kevin's Watch

Posted: **Thu Sep 21, 2006 11:46 pm**

Malik23 wrote:
Fist and Faith wrote:That whole entropy thing's always annoyed me. Everybody always says higher order is, say, a cup, and higher disorder is the cup broken in pieces on the floor. But I think the highest level of order would be if every ultimate-particle (whatever the most basic particle of matter/energy is) was perfectly evenly distributed throughout the universe? We need to break cups, people! Break them, then grind the pieces to dust, then throw the dust into the wind! Come on, folks, we're burning daylight! Let's get this universe in order!!
We can continue this in the Loresraat, if you want. But briefly, what you're describing is called the "heat death" of the universe. When all particles are uniformly distributed, it's the same as all useful energy bleeding away in the form of heat. Heat loss during work is a measure of inefficiency of a process. In a universe of uniform distribution, absolutely nothing can be done. It is death.

Imagine it like this: useful energy--the kind that runs living beings--is like water at the top of a waterfall. It is potential-energy-turning-into-kinetic-energy. As the water falls, you can extract energy from it and do useful things like turning turbines and lighting homes. But once it is at the bottom, it's useless. The only way it becomes useful again is with an external input of energy from the sun, evaporating it, lifting it back to the sky, so that it can fall again and produce kinetic energy. Except at the "heat death," all the stars have run down, too. Nothing recharges the system. All the water has utterly fallen to its lowest level, and nothing will lift it back up again.

Yeah, I follow that. But I'm disagreeing with equating useful and living with ordered. The water at the bottom is not less ordered, it is only less useful to certain points of view.

Hey, I'm just having fun with the words.

I'm being philosophical about the words the scientific community has chosen for this topic.

Malik23 wrote:[I wonder if this is related to caesures being called, falls? ]

Heh

Posted: **Fri Sep 22, 2006 9:03 am**

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edited to improve size

Posted: **Fri Sep 22, 2006 1:20 pm**

Stonemaybe wrote:

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I tend to disagree. I've always observed that lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllnlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllloo.

Posted: **Fri Sep 22, 2006 1:34 pm**

Who needs spoilers when you have an entropy-encryption-switch on your keyboard, eh?

Posted: **Fri Sep 22, 2006 1:41 pm**

Posted: **Fri Sep 22, 2006 1:42 pm**

Now THAT's ENTROPY!!

Posted: **Sat Sep 23, 2006 11:09 am**

edited to make the post smaller

Posted: **Tue Sep 26, 2006 11:26 am**

Haha, I thought this was going to be an interesting topic, but instead I see it's all distorted by well meaning humourists.

Entropy. The second law of thermodynamics. The heat death of the universe. Yeah!

Nothing lasts forever.

Is entropy reversible? Can it ever be? Is it a law or just a guideline?

--A

Posted: **Tue Sep 26, 2006 1:42 pm**

I suppose it depends if the universe truly is an enclosed system or not...

I like statements like 'nothing lasts forever' because they are paradoxical, and I like to believe that paradox is at the very heart of Creation. I mean, if it's true that nothing lasts forever, then something lasts forever, and that something is...nothing!

It's like saying 'there's no such thing as nothing'. To me, nothing is something. It's a concept, a field in which That Which Is Not can Be. (And Be Not

)

In order for Nothing to Be, it has to Be in the context of what it...isn't. If you see what I mean.

Sooo...if nothing lasts forever, (even cold November Rain

)there has to be some sense, some limit, in which it can be said to 'last'. And once you set limits to it, it ceases to be what it is(n't) by definition.

Lordie, this is making my head hurt!

Tying this up to Entropy now...if no form or law of creation is eternal, I suppose it stads to reason that even the 2nd law of thermodynamics has a shelf life. And if so, how are we ever going to know what lies beyond 'heat death' of the universe...?

Posted: **Tue Sep 26, 2006 8:07 pm**

Asimov has a great short story about entropy.. I can't remember the title.. so I'll see if I can locate it.

Posted: **Wed Sep 27, 2006 12:07 am**

Asimov: The Last Question. One of my favorite short stories ever.

Order is structure, pattern. A homogeneous state represents zero structure.

Separating some water by putting a bit uphill (into a state with more potential energy) is a more structured--ordered--state than when all water pools at sea level, which is a more homogeneous state. Extracting useful energy from a system is only possible by decreasing that system's order or structure, by "breaking" that order. No conversion of potential energy into kinetic energy ever results in a net increase in structure for a closed system.\

Decrease in order is a perfect way to describe increase in entropy and the conversion of potential energy into work. It's not a poetic description, it's a literal one.

Posted: **Wed Sep 27, 2006 6:35 am**

Is decrease of order the same thing as increase of chaos?

(And won't a mod fix this topic please?

The side-scrolling is killing me.

)

--A

Posted: **Wed Sep 27, 2006 8:02 pm**

Is decrease of order the same thing as increase of chaos?

Sure they're the same. Take a rubic's cube, mix it up (make it more homogeneous), and you both decrease the order of the colors and increase the chaos or randomness of the colors.

I'm not sure what is so funny. Did I miss the joke?

Posted: **Wed Sep 27, 2006 8:37 pm**

One of the earlier, sillier posts (perhaps mine under the spoiler) seems to have made the width of this thread inordinately long...

Is it possible that some PCs are not affected by this?

Posted: **Wed Sep 27, 2006 10:24 pm**

Perhaps Lord Morham or aTomic can edit it down to restore a normal page size ... please!!

Or an ADMIN even!!

Posted: **Wed Sep 27, 2006 10:37 pm**

Done.

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 7:05 am**

Thanks LM. All monitors are affected Chuchichastli, the degree depends on the resoution settings.

Not much of a joke Malik, I just laugh all the time.

But what I was thinking was that order doesn't necessarily decrease into chaos, but rather other forms of order. Surely a dead sun is not more chaotic than a live one?

We seem to be assuming that life and the transfer of energy is order. But it seems to me that the opposite could equally be true. Is the waterfall ordered? Or is the pool at the bottom?

--A

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:46 am**

My point is that the rules of physics that govern reality & cause & effect are themselves expressions or demonstrations of order. I'm not an expert on astrophysics or big bang theory, but I do remember reading in the New Scientist once that these very Laws came into being a certain amount of time AFTER the Big Bang - probably only a matter of nanoseconds, but after it, nevertheless.

This would suggest that a small, hot, dense Universe once existed before the formation of scientific laws and constants. Which would in turn suggest that order formed from chaos/entropy.

Pure speculation, of course, but a Universe of decreasing energy may well be unable to 'keep' its laws, if the question is that law itself is an expression of Order & Energy. If scientific law breaks down, can we really predict anything about the state of entropy that follows? Even how long such a state will last?

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 10:16 am**

Fascinating. If physical laws are a side-effect as it were of energy, (I'm still not happy calling it Order), then surely entropy will have an effect on them.

I like it.

--A

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 11:46 am**

Who knows? Maybe some day in the vastly distant future, E will only have a 50-50 chance of equalling MC squared!