Logical Hierarchies

EBTX,

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">To make it acceptable to them you must show "observational evidence of entropic reversal". This has never been done before in the history of physics, but then ... it's history is quite brief.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">On the other hand, you must posit a way to get around entropy by resorting to "scales" or other places where entropy is reversed so that the universe can go on indefinitely. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Have a look at the article "Small Systems Defy Second Law" : physicsweb.org/article/news/6/7/11

According to the article, we may have the condition that decreasing entropy on lower scales will compensate the increasing entropy on higher scales, thereby rendering the entropy constant.





"It only takes one white crow to proof that not all crows are black."

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">a theory that is a product of deduction from reasonable assumptions <u>and whose predictions are in accord with experiments to at least the same degree as a theory produced by induction </u>should always be favored.
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MM is not in accord with experiment to the same degree as the Standard Model (however flawed it may be). MM requires a total violation of the directional character of time with respect to the 2nd law of thermodynamics ... based on no experimental evidence whatsoever. Only conjectured "scales" are offered to offset this liability.
For MM to be accepted in the Newtonian sense would require ... absolutely ... the repeal of the 2nd law of thermodynamics (one of the cornerstones of modern technological civilization). I do not say that this can't happen ... only that ... I have serious doubts about that possibility.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">"But over sufficiently large ranges of space, time and scale MM predicts that they balance." - [in regard to entropy]
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Over sufficiently large ranges means greater than the Hubble radius (as that is how far one can verify a 2nd law, directional character). Over scale means (experimentally) "too small to be observed". Over time means longer than about 14 billion years.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Have a look at the article "Small Systems Defy Second Law" : physicsweb.org/article/news/6/7/11
According to the article, we may have the condition that decreasing entropy on lower scales will compensate the increasing entropy on higher scales, thereby rendering the entropy constant.
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Well, this is the greatest news I've ever heard in my 55 years ... bar none.
Free energy, just around the corner!
I'm gonna' quit my day job tomorrow ;o)

Well, that's what I'd do if the 2nd law failed. I'll bet that they can't get it to power even a mechanical sea horse going up and down in your mother's aquarium with fifty years of development.

Nature doesn't show us something that's everywhere the same without meaning it. The 2nd law is undoubtedly final and that gives the universe a directional character obviating the "no beginning" condition of MM.

Entropy is about things falling down gradients or dispersing uniformly through an equipotential making them unavailable for "work". It's about matter falling into clumps and sending photons to spread out uniformly filling space. It's about the increasing unavailability of energy which is thought to be of finite quantity in the observable universe (Standard Model). Now, perhaps over times longer than the supposed duration of the Standard Model universe ... maybe things will change ... but that's what Newton wouldn't accept as a working model. He would say that what is here and everywhere else apparent should be taken as the "inductive argument" over which other hypothesis should not be placed.

No, I don't think that TVF should abandon his model. But he knows that it will not become mainstream thought in his lifetime even if it were, in reality, correct. The best he can do is keep the idea alive and perhaps someone will pick it up and carry it forward till the matter is resolved one way or the other. And that's all anyone with a different hypothesis can hope for.

The realization that there are entropy-consuming processes in the Universe does not cause previously recognized entropy-producing processes to disappear.

Nor does it repeal the second law. It just means that the second law has a different range of applicability than we previously thought.

Heat engines still work just like they always did. For the same reason.

A theoretical imbalance is now balanced.

*IF* the Universe really is infinitely old as the MM deduces, then it would be necessary for something like entropy to be conserved.

The range of time, scale and space needed for an entropy consuming process to operate is not that large. Ex - a large cloud of gas and dust is about as disorganized as you can get. But under the influence of gravity it is transformed into one or more stars, some planets, moons, etc. You must do work (e.g. explode one of the stars or planets) to return this arrangement of matter to the former condition

And on some of those objects gravity driven processes lead to concentrations of particular kinds of matter that further reduce the original entropy of the cloud.

But note that while all of this is going on the entropy-producing processes that we all know and love are also still hard at work. Wood burns. Iron rusts. Erosion flattens. Certain atoms decay.

LB

If we look at entropy as a measure of increasing dispersal and chaos, then I'm not sure what to think of it all.

First of all, the creation of life, or organisms, is an immense complex process since it involves a very specific ordering of atoms and molecules, Sure, this costs energy, however, if we look at atomic level, why do some atoms and molecules aggregate as to make life to begin with? Is it a scattering process that drains energy, but yields high ordering? I believe that our view of the universe is too mechanical.

"It only takes one white crow to proof that not all crows are black."