Les Sleeth

I just wanted add (similar to what I think Severian is pointing to) that the "paradox" could happen in different gravity situations too. If one twin stayed on Earth, and the other were instantly beamed to a neutron star (and could survive there), stayed there for a year, and then was instantly beamed back to Earth, the twins would notice the neutron traveler had aged less, and that his watch was behind the Earth twin's watch. Relativity can be understood better if we look at the history of the universe. What we call "time" is simply our observation of the universe changing at a certain rate. That change is toward disorganization, so time is really the rate of entropic change. The universe started out tightly compacted, it is now flying apart. The balance between this density and expansion is moderated by gravity, which is also reproduced when one accelerates. What gravity and acceleration do, in a sense, is create anti-expansion and is therefore anti-entropic. It slows everything down, sends it back toward its originating direction of density. So the rate of entropy of clocks, body aging, and everything else in a frame of reference are affected. A question I asked at another science site once was if the traveling twin, Bill, would notice in any way. Let's say Bill spends 35 years on Earth, takes off in his space ship, and observes his clock register the passing of five years. When he gets back to Earth, he finds his twin has aged 15 years. Would Bill feel like those were the longest five years he'd ever experienced? Remember Bill had had 35 years in Earth's frame of reference. He would have that at least to compare to his space ship frame of reference. All the physicalist science types insisted there would be absolutely no way to tell in terms of measurement. I agreed. But what I wanted to know was if Bill might feel it. Really I was posing a question about the nature of consciousness. If consciousness does emerge from the physical processes of the brain, then Bill probably wouldn't notice. But if consciousness is not physical but, for instance, some quality associated with the brain, then it might have its own internal frame of "feeling" reference which might sense it had lived through an awfully long five years.

Since I posted here, I've done some research. You are wrong about the "majority of scientists." The majority think the speed of gravity is c, just as Einstein predicted. Although there are some technical problems with Kopeikin's results which invalidate them, swansont seems right to suggest, "Van Flandern is a crackpot." I am just an amateur myself, so I posted the issue brought up here at another science site where I participate (physicsforums.com). That site is moderated by working physicists, educators and grad students, so if you'd like to read the discussion that took off from my post about Kopeik and Van Flandern's challenge try here.

I think other posters are suggesting that entropy alone may not be the only factor determine the fate of the universe, which is true. But just answering your question posed above, the law of entropy, considered as the only determining factor, says the universe is going to disintegrate.

Good point. After reading the article you referenced, I think there are problems with Kopeikin's results. Thanks.

Hmmmmm, did you read my entire post? Anticipating someone thinking I don't understand entropy, I tried to make it clear I wasn't suggesting they didn't obey the second law; everything does. I specifically pointed to behavior and not to the thermal processes involved in achieving that behavior. Part of the problem is that the term "entropy" has been expanded from thermodynamics to a general term for the ever-growing disorder in the universe. In my own mind I think about two variations as thermodynamic entropy and structural entropy, respectively. In terms of gib65's question, he seemed to be thinking about the more general, or "structural," use of the term. In our universe, there are no known examples of extended ordering (structural antientropy) which surpass that found in life and consciousness. As impressive as the formation of the complex dynamics of a star is from collapsed interstellar gas, for instance, it doesn't hold a candle to billions of years of layer after layer organizing done through evolution. If anything comes close to structural antientropic behavior, evolution has to be a top candidate. But then there is consciousness. Look at us, building, learning, creating, trying to survive . . . all of it structurally antientropic behavior. Of course, assuming consciousness emerged from life processes, that sort of makes sense. My point was that although there is no thermodynamic term for antientropy, there are instances of extraordinary structurally antientropic behaviors which we have termed "life" and "consciousness."

Hi everyone, this is my first post here. I realize you are probably looking for a purely physical answer, but in terms of behavior at least, two apparently anti-entropic processes are the ordering that results in adaptive evolutionary change (remarkable since through reproduction it can last for a long time), and the tendency to order things a healthy consciousness exhibits. Of course, everyone knows in terms overall disorder (via metabolism, aging, etc., entropy still prevails.