Time's Arrow: 2nd Law applies (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, October 01, 2016, 15:46 (2973 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: I think most of us would agree that our own solar system is in such good order that it allows life, which itself demands an astonishingly ordered system. Does Sean Carroll honestly believe that our ordered solar system and life itself were present at the moment of the Big Bang (if it happened)? The order of our solar system and of life itself is the result of mixed ingredients, and the fact that we can't reverse the order of events that have happened is irrelevant. As far as this naïve non-physicist is concerned, the history of the universe appears to show an ongoing sequence of disorder - order - disorder. Yes, all order moves to a disordered state, but order appears to have arisen out of disorder (e.g. disordered individual components without life are combined into an order that gives life). This means that there is a continuous process of cause and effect, of before and after, in which case the only way time will disappear is if the universe itself disappears and there is absolutely nothing left.-The 2nd Law is quite specific that in a isolated closed system energy dissipates. In an open system like the Earth and the Sun, the Earth continuously receives new energy and can develop more organization and complexity.-Sean Carroll is using the Big Bang energy plasma as pure and perfectly ordered to start with as the universe evolves. His statements are correct.