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Posted

I recently googled the antonym of entropy and got a variety of answers. I believe I follow your same conceptual idea of entropy, and I believe humans role is to end the entropy of the universe. I wish to follow up but my phone is about to die... 

Posted (edited)
On 10/12/2004 at 5:15 PM, gib65 said:

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

 

"A measure of the disorder in a system."

 

I also entered "entropy" into http://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?

 

Unless one thinks about breaking the laws of therrnodynamics (negative entropy) then no such thing exists in nature. It exists within the second law the entropy can never be negative. 

Except for the ''exceptions'' of physics, like negentropy. 

wiki~

 

''Research concerning the relationship between the thermodynamic quantity entropy and the evolution of life began around the turn of the 20th century. In 1910, American historian Henry Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume A Letter to American Teachers of History proposing a theory of history based on the second law of thermodynamics and on the principle of entropy.[1][2] The 1944 book What is Life? by Nobel-laureate physicist Erwin Schrödinger stimulated research in the field. In his book, Schrödinger originally stated that life feeds on negative entropy, or negentropy as it is sometimes called, but in a later edition corrected himself in response to complaints and stated the true source is free energy. More recent work has restricted the discussion to Gibbs free energy because biological processes on Earth normally occur at a constant temperature and pressure, such as in the atmosphere or at the bottom of an ocean, but not across both over short periods of time for individual organisms.''

Edited by Dubbelosix
  • 2 weeks later...
Posted
On 26/10/2017 at 4:06 AM, Futureka said:

I believe humans role is to end the entropy of the universe.

Reminds me of the Asimov story, The Last Questionhttp://multivax.com/last_question.html

On 26/10/2017 at 4:06 AM, Futureka said:

I wish to follow up but my phone is about to die...

As Pierre de Fermat would have said if he was around today.

  • 1 month later...
Posted
21 hours ago, Butch said:

According to modern physics the opposite of entropy is the past, ....

I could use a laugh; lets see you find some bit of modern physics that says what  you claim it does.

Or, perhaps you could just agree that you were utterly wrong.

Posted
3 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

I could use a laugh; lets see you find some bit of modern physics that says what  you claim it does.

Or, perhaps you could just agree that you were utterly wrong.

Well, I guess you would have a laugh if you got the joke...

Physics says the universe is entropic (that is as time passes) So... In the past the universe had less entropy.

Geez, I hate having to explain a joke... Perhaps Swan could do a cartoon for you.

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