What's the opposite of entropy?

[ethanwa]

The answer to the original post is Extropy.

 

ex·tro·py/ˈekstrəpē/

Noun: The pseudoscientific principle that life will expand indefinitely and in an orderly, progressive way throughout the entire universe by the means of human intelligence and technology.

[J.C.MacSwell]

Negentropy

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy

[Angel98392]

I see that a couple others have found antonyms for entropy and I just wish to share another: Ectropy.

In thermodynamics, ectropy is a measure of the tendency of a dynamical system to do useful work and grow more organized. Ectropy, in a loose sense, can be thought of as the opposite of entropy. Ectropy is minus entropy. That is, instead of saying "lose entropy" you can say "gain ectropy", instead of saying "gain entropy" you can say "lose ectropy".

 

The term was introduced in the late 20th century by mathematician and philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine and is often more intuitive than its counterpart. The term's merit is that in order to understand a concept, it can be useful to look at it from the other side. Sloppily speaking, ectropy signifies order; slightly more exactly, usable energy. Actually, what we call energy is often ectropy.

 

The Earth, for example, gets electromagnetic waves from the sun and sends electromagnetic waves back into space, but the incoming waves have shorter wavelengths (higher frequencies) and therefore more ectropy. So the Earth's ectropy is increased by the sun. When we eat, we take in ectropy from the food.

 

The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that in a closed system, ectropy will decrease. An organism which is isolated from the outside world will die and deteriorate because its ectropy decreases. It needs ectropy coming from the environment to keep living.

[Mystery111]

I googled for "define: entropy" and came up with this:

 

"A measure of the disorder in a system."

 

I also entered "entropy" into www.dictionary.com and found, among other definitions:

 

"The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity."

 

So if I understand this correctly, entropy is the phenomenon observed when, for instance, an elastic band goes from stretched to slack or a building going from erect to rubble when demolished by means of explosives. Is this correct?

 

If so, what do we call the opposite phenomenon - that is, the building up of physical systems from something simple with uniformly distributed energy to something more complex and non-uniformly structured?

 

If someone asked me ''What is the opposite of entropy,'', I would need to say it was the opposite of the definition itself of entropy. That would be it's a measure of an increasing order instead of an increasing disorder of your systems initial origin.

 

The physical consequence would be that the system will contract in size, assuming we are talking about a system as being a universe where there are moving clocks (peices of matter) and it will continue to contract until it reaches a singular localized region. Assuming a pointlike particle is a system without extended structure (ie. dimensions) then this point in space accurately corresponds to to a singularity when you compress spacetime (and the dynamical fluctuations) into the point where the primordial time and space began then what you have is entropy at it's grund state. But if the singularity is to be taken seriosly, then this ''ground state order'' is in fact the same state we attribute to the presence of systems which correspond to infinite degrees of freedom for false vacuum states which have a reseviour of negative exotic (and potentially imaginary) energy/mass. It is almost like the battery which powered the existence of the appearance of matter and energy. Space and time must have been a consequence of quantum principles.

 

Assuming quantum mechanics and field theory has it correct, then compressing matter and energy infinitely on top of each other into a dimensionless point will violate the Uncertainty Principle. No particle can be made to have an infinitely defined region of space, so expansion of space must be the result of allowing it's fluctuations to permeate greater degrees of freedom, expanded by three dimensions, four adding time Minkowski space. So the expansion of spacetime, must be a direct consequence of quantum mechanics, refusing matter to be compressed violating the laws of uncertainty.

[cosmic rain]

All physical systems in the universe are subject to entropy and decay from the moment they appear. It all comes down to the second law of thermodynamics. For example, the big bang left a signature called the microwave background. Some scientists believe the signature to be that of low-temperature hydrogen. Either way, heat flows toward the cold, and time flows only in one direction.

[IM Egdall]

Here's how I think it goes. The second law of thermodynamics is a probability law. For lots of particles, the probability is they will become more and more disordered over time. This implies a forward arrow of time.

 

But for just a few particles, the second law does NOT hold. The laws of physics for individual particles show no arrow of time -- they work the same for forward time and backward time.

 

Our macro world is made up of many, many particles. So this is perhaps why we see a forward arrow of time. But it is due to a statistical law. Very mysterious.

 

And if you ask why the universe was so ordered in its original state (per big bang cosmology), it gets even more mysterious.

 

(I got all this from reading Greene's Fabric of the Cosmos and other sources.)

Edited October 23, 2011 by IM Egdall

[Brant]

People say they can trap electrons but according to the uncertainty principle that is impossible. To do so would be the opposite of entropy, in a way, and the word to describe this does not exist, but I would look at zero point energy.

I googled for "define: entropy" and came up with this:

 

"A measure of the disorder in a system."

 

I also entered "entropy" into www.dictionary.com and found, among other definitions:

 

"The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity."

 

So if I understand this correctly, entropy is the phenomenon observed when, for instance, an elastic band goes from stretched to slack or a building going from erect to rubble when demolished by means of explosives. Is this correct?

 

If so, what do we call the opposite phenomenon - that is, the building up of physical systems from something simple with uniformly distributed energy to something more complex and non-uniformly structured?

 

People say they can trap electrons but according to the uncertainty principle that is impossible. To do so would be the opposite of entropy, in a way, and the word to describe this does not exist, but I would look at zero point energy. In addition I would say that our universe appears chaotic but out of that chaos has come the order of things we understand. Still I wonder what hides behind the veil, and where things like ferions go when you can't see them.

I googled for "define: entropy" and came up with this:

 

"A measure of the disorder in a system."

 

I also entered "entropy" into www.dictionary.com and found, among other definitions:

 

"The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity."

 

So if I understand this correctly, entropy is the phenomenon observed when, for instance, an elastic band goes from stretched to slack or a building going from erect to rubble when demolished by means of explosives. Is this correct?

 

If so, what do we call the opposite phenomenon - that is, the building up of physical systems from something simple with uniformly distributed energy to something more complex and non-uniformly structured?

[mississippichem]

People say they can trap electrons but according to the uncertainty principle that is impossible. To do so would be the opposite of entropy,

 

Not at all. All the uncertainty principle says (with respect to position and momentum anyway) is that your uncertainty in momentum times your uncertainty in positions can never be less than [math] \hbar / 2 [/math].

 

Also, nothing about the second law of thermodynamics prevents the entropy of a system from decreasing. It happens all the time. It says that the entropy of the universe must never decrease in time. The entropy of a system may decrease but the entropy of the surroundings will increase by a greater amount! Look in your refrigerator, it is cold I hope. Put your hand behind it. What do you feel? The entropy of the air in your kitchen is being increased.

Edited February 17, 2012 by mississippichem

[DrRocket]

The opposite of entropy is yportne, which makes as much sense as the question.

[Aguirre]

Asking what the opposite of entropy is, is like asking, "What's the opposite of temperature?"

 

 

 

If you want to lower the entropy you have to do work,

 

Entropy is defined for closed systems. What kind of work you need to lover of entropy?

But the entropy is a natural law. Acorrding to Landau-Lifschitz is a every day experience.

And by the way, how you define "closed systems"?

When entropy is a natural law than the system where this law is true should not be only

a artificially system.

 

and the entropy will have to increase somewhere else, as JaKiri stated.

Edited March 8, 2012 by swansont
fix quote tags

[swansont]

Entropy is defined for closed systems. What kind of work you need to lover of entropy?

But the entropy is a natural law. Acorrding to Landau-Lifschitz is a every day experience.

And by the way, how you define "closed systems"?

When entropy is a natural law than the system where this law is true should not be only

a artificially system.

 

I'm sorry, what does this have to do with the topic being discussed?

[Aguirre]

I'm sorry, what does this have to do with the topic being discussed?

The topic is:"What`s the oppostite of entropy"

 

I think your statement is to short and can therefore lead to the understanding

that the entropy can have 2 directions.

Your statement let totally open where the work to lower the entropy comes from.

So i think, i am not so far away from the topic.

Edited March 9, 2012 by swansont
fix quote tag

[swansont]

The topic is:"What`s the oppostite of entropy"

 

I think your statement is to short and can therefore lead to the understanding

that the entropy can have 2 directions.

Your statement let totally open where the work to lower the entropy comes from.

So i think, i am not so far away from the topic.

 

Entropy can go up. Locally it can go down, but only if it goes up somewhere else. Still nothing to do with "the opposite of entropy" as far as I can see.

 

Also, please learn how to properly use the quote tags. The part goes at the end of the section that's being quoted. When you put it at the end of the post, it looks like your words are included as part of the quote, i.e. they are being attributed to someone else.

[bigbrotherdiamond]

Some say that entrophy is merely a measuring system, a measure of disparity, chaos, deterioration, and so cannot have an opposite. If we agree to this then attraction can be said to be a measure of attractiveness, or gravily in the broader sense of the word.

That would mean that attraction and entropy are two seperate tendencies that have opposite effects, but are not polar opposites, as poles must always be directly linked in some way. Hence, one may have high levels of attraction at the same time as we have high levels of entrophy, or any other imaginable combination. If they were polar opposites then higher entrophy would invariably mean lower attraction and visa versa..

[RichIsnang]

As far as I know, it doesnt have an opposite. There are many measures that don't have opposites, as mentioned earlier, temperature. How does this need 2 pages lol

[juanrga]

I googled for "define: entropy" and came up with this:

 

"A measure of the disorder in a system."

 

I also entered "entropy" into www.dictionary.com and found, among other definitions:

 

"The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity."

 

So if I understand this correctly, entropy is the phenomenon observed when, for instance, an elastic band goes from stretched to slack or a building going from erect to rubble when demolished by means of explosives. Is this correct?

 

If so, what do we call the opposite phenomenon - that is, the building up of physical systems from something simple with uniformly distributed energy to something more complex and non-uniformly structured?

 

Those definitions appealing to "disorder" often confound the thermodynamic concept of entropy with the informational concept of entropy.

 

The opposite phenomenon that you report is creation of structures. It is studied with the concept of entropy as well.

[derek w]

Io the moon of Jupiter gains internal heat due to the gravitational pull of Jupiter,is this entropy in reverse?

[Bill Angel]

Those definitions appealing to "disorder" often confound the thermodynamic concept of entropy with the informational concept of entropy.

 

The opposite phenomenon that you report is creation of structures. It is studied with the concept of entropy as well.

One good example of what you mention is living organisms. We eat food and produce waste heat, but in the process synthesize highly ordered structures (DNA, enzymes, etc). Nevertheless a person's metabolism (via the waste products it produces) increases the overall entropy of the universe.

[swansont]

Io the moon of Jupiter gains internal heat due to the gravitational pull of Jupiter,is this entropy in reverse?

 

It's the result of work.

[juanrga]

One good example of what you mention is living organisms. We eat food and produce waste heat, but in the process synthesize highly ordered structures (DNA, enzymes, etc). Nevertheless a person's metabolism (via the waste products it produces) increases the overall entropy of the universe.

 

Living organisms are a beautiful example of dissipative structures.

[PeterJ]

Is not the OP simply referring to negative entropy?

 

 

 

 

[derek w]

ok.If the big bang happened in reverse and the whole universe was to collapse back to a single point would that not be negative entropy?

[StringsNThings]

Entropy is the evolving interactions of gravity and electromagnetic couplings throughout the universe.

 

 

The opposite of entropy is the ordered evolving interactions with reversed systems of causality.

 

A common assumption is that entropy is degenerative, but this seems to be short-sighted based on systems we are only now coming to understand to exist.

 

 

String Theory provides systems of approximations for influence, but the model of string theory buries necessary causality in its mathematic design. Without modification, string theory is missing the components needed to describe gravity interactions. Therefore, unification is without support.

[hepp]

spammy link removed by moderator

[Hillgetyah]

the opposite would be to undo the result of.  So it would be "organize" or "unintentionally organize" but which "antonym" you choose for yourself or your readers, depends if you and your listeners believe the universe was intentionally or unintentionally created to be at odds with entropy. So its an opinionated antonym oddly enough.

Edited September 8, 2017 by Hillgetyah
Rewording