X-Message-Number: 20875 From: Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 18:10:27 EST Subject: Re: Entropy --part1_a2.32121754.2b574463_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Robert Ettinger said: > You don't even need any math to prove to yourself that it is impossible to > reach AND MAINTAIN a state of maximum disorder. If a system could reach a > state of maximum disorder--the "most probable" distribution of > components--then the next change MUST be toward greater order or lower > entropy. (After that, a large decrease in entropy in a short time would > still > be unlikely under usual assumptions, but that isn't the issue.) > > R.E. > As I understand it, entropy is a mesure of randomness in a system. Because for one ordered state there are zillions of disordered ones, in nearly all cases one maximum disordered state evolves into another maximum disordered state. Only one time in a zillion years you can expect a "miracle", that it a spontaneous entropy reduction. For all macroscopic systems, the Universe is simply too young for giving any chance to such a miracle to happen somewhere. There is another problem, the maximum disorder contains the maximum information, there is no regularity giving room for data compression. So "miracles" would have to erase informations, something very difficult on quantum systems. Information can readilly be scrambled, by destroy it raise serious problems. So there may be no closed systems in the universe, not even the universe itself, so there would be no bottom line for entropy and no miracles. Yvan Bozzonetti. --part1_a2.32121754.2b574463_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=20875