- #1
benjayk
- 8
- 0
Hi everyone.
I'm very interested in how order and structures arises in the universe, but I don't get how thermodynamics (which seem to be closely linked to order, especially the second law) relates to that... So I will ask a few questions. Please don't be too technical, I study computer science and not physics, so I have only basic knowledge of physics that I learned in school (I vaguely know what classical mechanics, electromagnetism, theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, etc are about, but don't have in-depth knowledge).
If I understood correctly entropy always (or at the very least almost always) increases with time in closed systems. The universe started with 0 entropy (or something close to it) and evolves towards a state of more entropy. Often entropy is equated to disorder, or the unability of a system to do work.
But I imagine the Bing Bang to be a in very uniform state, but this would mean it had high entropy (which is not the case), so in what way was the Bing Bang most far from equillibrium?
Also, the universe at the Bing Bang as I imagine it can hardly said to exhibit (complex) structure. But our universe now does exhibit complex structure. Does this mean that structural complexity and entropy are not related? Or does increasing entropy even mean increased structural complexity? But this would mean that disorder is higher complexity, while I would call higher complexity more orderly. So is physical disorder really not disorder in the sense of disorder of information (=lack of useful information), but means something unrelated or even inversely related in physics?
I find it hard to imagine a universe which starts at order and devolves into an disordered/more random state. If we assume observers need order to exist this seems to entail that observers should occur most near to the Bing Bang, which doesn't seem to be the case at all.
It also makes no sense from my metaphysical perspective that information can not be - ultimately - destroyed (relations simply do exist, they determine the form of the physical universe, not the other way around). Most importantly consciousness can not cease to exist (forever). I think subjective immortality is the only thing which makes sense given that I can not conceive what the opposite could even mean *at all*. Saying consciousness will not be there at all makes as much sense as existence will not be there at all (since from my perspective - the only one that I have - my existence IS consciousness) - none, since there IS only existence.
I assume concsiousness will always tend to order, so this would suggest the opposite of a universe where less things can happen (less work can be done) and order decreases as time goes on.
Is it maybe possible that even though entropy tends to infinity for the entire universe some subsection of the universe can forever remain in a state of low entropy or even decrease in entropy (maybe due to intelligence dispersing the entropy it causes into outer space)? It seems to me that the universe tends to separate regions of high entropy (eg space) from regions of low entropy (eg structures on our earth). So could it be that the universe ultimately evolves to region(s) of infinite order and region(s) of infinite disorder (possibly much bigger or even unboundedly much bigger if the trend since the Bing Bang continues), in a way that the total entropy still increases forever?
I'm very interested in how order and structures arises in the universe, but I don't get how thermodynamics (which seem to be closely linked to order, especially the second law) relates to that... So I will ask a few questions. Please don't be too technical, I study computer science and not physics, so I have only basic knowledge of physics that I learned in school (I vaguely know what classical mechanics, electromagnetism, theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, etc are about, but don't have in-depth knowledge).
If I understood correctly entropy always (or at the very least almost always) increases with time in closed systems. The universe started with 0 entropy (or something close to it) and evolves towards a state of more entropy. Often entropy is equated to disorder, or the unability of a system to do work.
But I imagine the Bing Bang to be a in very uniform state, but this would mean it had high entropy (which is not the case), so in what way was the Bing Bang most far from equillibrium?
Also, the universe at the Bing Bang as I imagine it can hardly said to exhibit (complex) structure. But our universe now does exhibit complex structure. Does this mean that structural complexity and entropy are not related? Or does increasing entropy even mean increased structural complexity? But this would mean that disorder is higher complexity, while I would call higher complexity more orderly. So is physical disorder really not disorder in the sense of disorder of information (=lack of useful information), but means something unrelated or even inversely related in physics?
I find it hard to imagine a universe which starts at order and devolves into an disordered/more random state. If we assume observers need order to exist this seems to entail that observers should occur most near to the Bing Bang, which doesn't seem to be the case at all.
It also makes no sense from my metaphysical perspective that information can not be - ultimately - destroyed (relations simply do exist, they determine the form of the physical universe, not the other way around). Most importantly consciousness can not cease to exist (forever). I think subjective immortality is the only thing which makes sense given that I can not conceive what the opposite could even mean *at all*. Saying consciousness will not be there at all makes as much sense as existence will not be there at all (since from my perspective - the only one that I have - my existence IS consciousness) - none, since there IS only existence.
I assume concsiousness will always tend to order, so this would suggest the opposite of a universe where less things can happen (less work can be done) and order decreases as time goes on.
Is it maybe possible that even though entropy tends to infinity for the entire universe some subsection of the universe can forever remain in a state of low entropy or even decrease in entropy (maybe due to intelligence dispersing the entropy it causes into outer space)? It seems to me that the universe tends to separate regions of high entropy (eg space) from regions of low entropy (eg structures on our earth). So could it be that the universe ultimately evolves to region(s) of infinite order and region(s) of infinite disorder (possibly much bigger or even unboundedly much bigger if the trend since the Bing Bang continues), in a way that the total entropy still increases forever?