On 10 November 2014 16:01, Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> LizR wrote: > >> On 8 November 2014 16:53, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com <mailto: >> johnkcl...@gmail.com>> wrote: >> >> On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 3:56 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net >> <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote: >> >> > I'd say that expansion of the universe is almost necessary, >> not contingent. >> I'd say that by about 1850 when people started to have a >> understanding of what Entropy was physicists had all they needed to >> have known that the universe must have started out in a very very >> low entropy state, that is to say they could have predicted the Big >> Bang in the early to mid 19th century; and they wouldn't have needed >> to go near a telescope to do so. But unfortunately they didn't, it's >> one of the great failures of nerve or imagination in the history of >> science. >> Another feature of the big bang / expanding universe is that it >> continually raises the entropy ceiling (maxium entropy that can exist in a >> given volume). >> > > I think you should stop saying this. It is not true. You have not defined > what you mean by "maximum entropy" nor have you specified how that maximum > is calculated. If the maximum is defined as when all available degrees of > freedom are in thermal equilibrium, then the universe has never been in > such a state of maximum entropy, and it probably will not be until all > matter has collapsed into black holes and these have decayed by Hawking > radiation. > I'm dealing with classical thermodynamics, i.e. ignoring gravity and only talking about the arrangements of particles. I don't know how to incorporate gravity into the picture. If that makes what I'm suggesting inadmissible, fair enough. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
