Self Winding Universe?
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A better test would be to pour some of it into the cat, since they'll turn their nose up at it if it's the tiniest bit off.
Software Zen:
delete this;That's not a good test: like most adults cats he's a bit lactose intolerant (they lose the ability to absorb it when their digestive system changes while weaning). And guess who gets to clean up cat puke?
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640 Never throw anything away, Griff Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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That's not a good test: like most adults cats he's a bit lactose intolerant (they lose the ability to absorb it when their digestive system changes while weaning). And guess who gets to clean up cat puke?
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640 Never throw anything away, Griff Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
I didn't say it was a particularly tidy test, just an accurate one... :laugh: I have a senior cat who does exactly as you describe. She's also known for producing hair balls of greater size than her own body weight X| .
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Just a thought, still in process of being processed, but I was considering the possibility that the universe cannot "run down" - i.e., be completely consumed by entropy. Here's the basic thought: one could divide the universe into two types of regions: the 'void' and regions of content randomly dispersed throughout the void. Now, let's consider all of the regions of content. If all of them (i.e., all of existence) reached a final state of chaos then the whole of it would no longer have random content between the void - and thus their very existence in a state of total chaos is a contradiction. It would be incumbent upon existence to essentially become less chaotic in arbitrary local regions in order for the whole of existence to remain truly chaotic: it must not have the content of all places 'with stuff' be the same and thus, in a form of homogeneity. Now I'm not set on fully believing in this, yet, but it would essentially require that the universe's tendency towards chaos requires it to create local order (rewind) in order to become chaotic (contradiction, again?). A possible mechanism to undo chaos may be a reversal of local time, but that's somewhat shooting form the hip based on a conjecture and hand waving.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
It seems that life is anti-entropy. Whether it's an amoeba or a zebra, its always straining like hell against entropy to organize the physical world to perpetuate itself. It seems that if life figures out how to sweep across the universe faster than entropy, life could theoretically get the upper hand. If entropy winning is an ever expanding universe, getting lonelier and lonelier, what is life winning? Puppies, kittens & everyone singing Kum ba yah? Alas, it seems that either to the exclusion of the other is universal demise. With a universal balance between entropy and life, there could exist simultaneously pockets of chaos and clusters of kittens. Maybe equilibrium between them should be our hope?
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If you believe that energy and matter cannot be destroyed (or created), only changed in form then what does entropy do with it all? Does it have a big attic somewhere to put all this stuff? If so, does it get the stuff out again once it is full and that's where the cyclical universe theory comes from? ;P
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
For those of you that are not married, I offer my example of an explanation of entropy and matter being transformed from one state to another. Those of you that are married, regardless of how long, will understand. Entropy occurs when the balance on your credit cards gradually erode, the balances moving ever so close to extinction. The currency, associated with that credit card, is transformed into shoes, dresses, jewelry, etc. Fortunately, the cycle begins over each month. Mr. Einstein would have made this explanation way to complicated. Hopefully, I've simplified it.
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Just a thought, still in process of being processed, but I was considering the possibility that the universe cannot "run down" - i.e., be completely consumed by entropy. Here's the basic thought: one could divide the universe into two types of regions: the 'void' and regions of content randomly dispersed throughout the void. Now, let's consider all of the regions of content. If all of them (i.e., all of existence) reached a final state of chaos then the whole of it would no longer have random content between the void - and thus their very existence in a state of total chaos is a contradiction. It would be incumbent upon existence to essentially become less chaotic in arbitrary local regions in order for the whole of existence to remain truly chaotic: it must not have the content of all places 'with stuff' be the same and thus, in a form of homogeneity. Now I'm not set on fully believing in this, yet, but it would essentially require that the universe's tendency towards chaos requires it to create local order (rewind) in order to become chaotic (contradiction, again?). A possible mechanism to undo chaos may be a reversal of local time, but that's somewhat shooting form the hip based on a conjecture and hand waving.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
OK, not at the Universe level, but all the matter speeding from galaxies away from them eventually coalesce to the gravity of nearby influences creating new BIG BANGs. Einstein's greatest personal discovery was that matter and energy cannot be either created or destroyed. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Cthulu discovered that the whole universe was his...
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Just a thought, still in process of being processed, but I was considering the possibility that the universe cannot "run down" - i.e., be completely consumed by entropy. Here's the basic thought: one could divide the universe into two types of regions: the 'void' and regions of content randomly dispersed throughout the void. Now, let's consider all of the regions of content. If all of them (i.e., all of existence) reached a final state of chaos then the whole of it would no longer have random content between the void - and thus their very existence in a state of total chaos is a contradiction. It would be incumbent upon existence to essentially become less chaotic in arbitrary local regions in order for the whole of existence to remain truly chaotic: it must not have the content of all places 'with stuff' be the same and thus, in a form of homogeneity. Now I'm not set on fully believing in this, yet, but it would essentially require that the universe's tendency towards chaos requires it to create local order (rewind) in order to become chaotic (contradiction, again?). A possible mechanism to undo chaos may be a reversal of local time, but that's somewhat shooting form the hip based on a conjecture and hand waving.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
Local order for the sake of global entropy isn't anything new. Stars for example, are a more ordered system than thin gas stretched out throughout space, but stars actively increase the entropy by burning gas (as heat energy has the highest entropy of them all). Even life works the same way, locally, a living cell is more ordered than some primordial soup but by converting energy, life helps greatly increasing entropy. And as experience has shown, the more complex life gets, the more entropy gets generated (industrialization has increased the entropy output like nothing else before it).
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Local order for the sake of global entropy isn't anything new. Stars for example, are a more ordered system than thin gas stretched out throughout space, but stars actively increase the entropy by burning gas (as heat energy has the highest entropy of them all). Even life works the same way, locally, a living cell is more ordered than some primordial soup but by converting energy, life helps greatly increasing entropy. And as experience has shown, the more complex life gets, the more entropy gets generated (industrialization has increased the entropy output like nothing else before it).
Again (and not intending to sound rude!) - I know what entropy is and how it "works" - it is, in fact, what gives a direction to time if you consider it. And studied enough thermodynamics to be pretty damn familiar with it, even quantitatively, as it the -T△S component in the Gibbs free energy. None of that, along with your observations are the point. Restated: if the universe reaches a point where all content is in a total state of entropy, that state, itself, has lost a component of randomness as there is no variation in the state. Thus, for entropy to continue (a poor choice of words) some component(s) must always maintain a difference from a state of total entropy. My hypothesis, then, is that it could be a spontaneous change of state to any component, reducing it from a state of total entropy as it strives toward universal entropy (a logical contradiction?) which is, in a sense, a local rewind. Taken a step further - which assumes some correctness in my hypothesis, one mechanism for this could be a local reverse in the direction of time . . . at least from the point of view of an outside observer. Ironically, the decrease in entropy, being potentially spontaneous, is still following its local time flow in a positive direction. Let yourself then dream: we could be oscillating, irregularly, in a time stream without direction from an outside observation (outside of time, that is!) and things keep happening, unhappening, and the like. Inside this stream, however, we'd never notice.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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Again (and not intending to sound rude!) - I know what entropy is and how it "works" - it is, in fact, what gives a direction to time if you consider it. And studied enough thermodynamics to be pretty damn familiar with it, even quantitatively, as it the -T△S component in the Gibbs free energy. None of that, along with your observations are the point. Restated: if the universe reaches a point where all content is in a total state of entropy, that state, itself, has lost a component of randomness as there is no variation in the state. Thus, for entropy to continue (a poor choice of words) some component(s) must always maintain a difference from a state of total entropy. My hypothesis, then, is that it could be a spontaneous change of state to any component, reducing it from a state of total entropy as it strives toward universal entropy (a logical contradiction?) which is, in a sense, a local rewind. Taken a step further - which assumes some correctness in my hypothesis, one mechanism for this could be a local reverse in the direction of time . . . at least from the point of view of an outside observer. Ironically, the decrease in entropy, being potentially spontaneous, is still following its local time flow in a positive direction. Let yourself then dream: we could be oscillating, irregularly, in a time stream without direction from an outside observation (outside of time, that is!) and things keep happening, unhappening, and the like. Inside this stream, however, we'd never notice.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
Quantum mechanics dictate that SOMETHING will happen one way or another, on miniscule scales. Even if the universe devolves into a rather monotonous full-entropy-soup, local changes will always exist. That's however rather ordinary physics, scifi stuff like spontaneous reversal of time not included. The reality of CPT symmetry is still not conclusively decided by experiment, but all signs point to it standing.
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Quantum mechanics dictate that SOMETHING will happen one way or another, on miniscule scales. Even if the universe devolves into a rather monotonous full-entropy-soup, local changes will always exist. That's however rather ordinary physics, scifi stuff like spontaneous reversal of time not included. The reality of CPT symmetry is still not conclusively decided by experiment, but all signs point to it standing.
Member 9167057 wrote:
CPT symmetry
Had to look up what that is - but, at least according to the Wikipedia, whatever it is has been found to:
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Efforts during the late 1950s revealed the violation of P-symmetry by phenomena that involve the weak force, and there were well-known violations of C-symmetry as well. For a short time, the CP-symmetry was believed to be preserved by all physical phenomena, but that was later found to be false too, which implied, by CPT invariance, violations of T-symmetry as well.
But you note the idea of a
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monotonous full-entropy-soup,
And my thinking was such a state cannot exist in that it would violate the concept of entropy, itself. At the point where full entropy would be possible, something, somewhere, must be spoiling full entropy - which, expressing with the weakness of language - full entropy can only exist you don't have it. (but is getting rather close) I'll except part of the quantum mechanical rational in that full entropy need only be marred somewhere, statistically, at all times. Schroedinger's cat may (or may not) have had reconcilliation.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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Member 9167057 wrote:
CPT symmetry
Had to look up what that is - but, at least according to the Wikipedia, whatever it is has been found to:
Quote:
Efforts during the late 1950s revealed the violation of P-symmetry by phenomena that involve the weak force, and there were well-known violations of C-symmetry as well. For a short time, the CP-symmetry was believed to be preserved by all physical phenomena, but that was later found to be false too, which implied, by CPT invariance, violations of T-symmetry as well.
But you note the idea of a
Quote:
monotonous full-entropy-soup,
And my thinking was such a state cannot exist in that it would violate the concept of entropy, itself. At the point where full entropy would be possible, something, somewhere, must be spoiling full entropy - which, expressing with the weakness of language - full entropy can only exist you don't have it. (but is getting rather close) I'll except part of the quantum mechanical rational in that full entropy need only be marred somewhere, statistically, at all times. Schroedinger's cat may (or may not) have had reconcilliation.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
How does that violate the concept of entropy?
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How does that violate the concept of entropy?
Member 9167057 wrote:
How does that violate the concept of entropy?
To what do you refer when you use "that"? But, before you explain the mysterious 'that', try to keep in mind, this is a musing - not a presentation before the Nobel Committee. Achievement of total chaos is simultaneously unachievable. Perhaps our reality, our entire universe, is the last pocket of non-fully-chaotic materials and energy in the totality of existence - but only lately. The big bang? Perhaps the a possible manifestation of the spontaneous creation of our universe to thwart total chaos in order to maintain it.
The universe rewinds on any scale"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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Member 9167057 wrote:
How does that violate the concept of entropy?
To what do you refer when you use "that"? But, before you explain the mysterious 'that', try to keep in mind, this is a musing - not a presentation before the Nobel Committee. Achievement of total chaos is simultaneously unachievable. Perhaps our reality, our entire universe, is the last pocket of non-fully-chaotic materials and energy in the totality of existence - but only lately. The big bang? Perhaps the a possible manifestation of the spontaneous creation of our universe to thwart total chaos in order to maintain it.
The universe rewinds on any scale"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
Well, what "that" were you referring to when you said "And my thinking was such a state cannot exist in that it would violate the concept of entropy"? That's the same "that" I am talking about. Anyway, while there's an interesting philosophical question of what maximum entropy is, in it's physical form, there's no actual hard facts pointing to maximum entropy spontaneously giving birth to a universe, order. Our universe being but a pocket in a metaverse is an interesting thought, but it's more of a mathemathical play. If you care, there's an even more interesting theory of our universe being a low-energy pocket of a-forever-expanding-high-vacuum-energy-inflating-metaverse. As far as the math goes, it makes somewhat more sense than assuming the universe being a pocket in a maximum-entryopy-metaverse, but it's still about as real as tachyons (which also work out mathemathically, but have pretty much 0 resemblence to reality). To wind back quite a lot, it's interesting to regard maximum entropy as being identical to maximum order. How comes? Order got to do with symmetry. You can have, let's say, translational symmetry, rotational symmetry, mirroring symmetry. The more rotational axes or translational vectors you have, the more order generally is there. But a state of maximum entropy has all the symmetries there are, the set of translational vectors is infinite, same as rotational axes and angles. That's not very substantial though. For starters, talking about entropy in terms of order or chaos doesn't really hold. In physics, entropy goes woth the number of microscopic scales corresponding to the same macroscopic state, or rather to the same macroscopic energy. Back to the big bang, the universe being an island in a vast world of maximum entropy is but a theory. A nice one, sure, but the universe may just as well be, well the universe. As in "all there is". Not that long ago, an anomaly in the CMB was theorized to be another bubble universe (all in the context of the M-theory, here synonymous with string theory, which by itself is under scrutiny as it seems to be impossible to combine with our reality) but that's all rather unproven, more in the realm of "Well, sure, this may be the case, but let's go with Occam's Razor first". In other words, a universe in a state of maximum entropy spontaneously giving birth to a pocket universe isn't exactly impossible according to modern physics, but so is technically time travel (which just requires some exotic stuff with negative mass). In other words, not exa
