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What is Entropy?
The actions of anything, from the flight of an insect to the movements of the largest galaxies, are caused by energy changes. If we are to comprehend the universe, it is vital to understand energy and the rules governing it. In particular, it is vital to understand the laws of thermodynamics. The first of these laws tells us there is a fixed amount of energy in the universe. Energy can be changed from one form to another, but never created or destroyed. Energy which appears to have disappeared has in fact been converted into a form we cannot detect - for example, sound energy seems to be lost, but really turns into minute quantities of heat. Although energy cannot be destroyed, it is of little use to anyone if it cannot make things happen. Unfortunately, the second law of thermodynamics tells us all energy changes decrease the amount of useful energy in the universe. Consider a box of small magnets. If the small magnets are lined up in the same direction, as a group they can attract other metal objects. If they are not lined up in the same direction, individual magnets cancel each other's effect and cannot do useful work. The same is true of energy - it is useful when it is ordered, but when it is disordered, its effects cancel each other out. For example, although the twelve men below all have the same strength, the 'ordered' six can push a lorry (useful work) and the other six cannot.
Entropy is a measure of the lack of order in the energy. There is no definite value of entropy for a given system (as there is for, say, mass), as entropy is a purely statistical measure. When there is zero entropy, all the energy can be used. As the entropy increases, available energy decreases until, with maximum entropy, no useful energy is available. All systems, therefore, tend towards a state with maximum entropy. In most cases heat is the energy form with most entropy, so all energy tends to become heat. As a heat difference has some order (the heat flows in one direction, which can be used to do work), any heat differences will decrease. Thus an object with maximum entropy is completely homogenous (same throughout) in terms of temperature and has no energy but heat.
Specific Entropy
So far I have discussed the fact that, although the energy in the universe remains constant, less and less of it can be used to do work, as entropy increases. Though the entropy of a small system is easy
to calculate (compare the 'useful' energy to the heat energy within it), measuring entropy on the scale of the universe presents many problems 1. We cannot physically measure the 'useful' energy or the heat energy even in nearby stars, let alone the rest of the universe. 2. Although we can roughly infer the heat energy of a region of space, due to its radiation, we cannot measure the level of heat accurately. 3. Even if we could measure a region's entropy accurately, we couldn't scale it up to the size of the universe. We know neither if that region of space reflects the universe's entropy as a whole, nor the size of the universe to scale it up to. The specific entropy of the universe helps solve these problems. Before I define it, I will explain how the idea was developed, and in so doing, why it makes sense. All hot objects tend to give out electromagnetic radiation (light) - the hotter the object is, the more photons (units of radiation) are given off. As heat increases anywhere, so the number of photons will increase. Therefore photon numbers are a good indicator of the amount of entropy. However, counting them all is impossible. Instead we can count their numbers in a given volume of space. As photons travel very fast and move through a vacuum, the number of photons is likely to be fairly uniform throughout space. This idea runs into problems when we realise that in most models of the universe space is not static but expanding. Even if the number of photons in the universe stays the same, their numbers in a fixed volume would vary - we need to count the numbers of photons relative to something which remains constant. The proton (a fundamental particle found in the centre of atoms) was chosen for this task. The photon to proton ratio is called the specific entropy and is used to approximate the true entropy of the universe. The specific entropy is an important tool in understanding the universe, because it gives a consistant, accurately defined and easily measurable idea of the universe's entropy.
Entropy of Gravity
To clarify, gravitationally dimpled means space-time is distorted a lot. The laws of relativity state that mass distorts space-time, the larger the mass, the greater the distortion. Therefore, to dimple the universe matter must move together - the explanation is no more than the original problem formulated in a different way.
If gravity contradicts entropy, then surely all other forces should also do so. Electromagnetism is probably the best known of these other forces, so let's consider this. When an electromagnetic force is used it does so by exchanging a force particle. In this case, that particle is a photon.
Now let's think back to the specific entropy - the ratio of photons to protons. When electromagnetism is used, photons are produced, so the specific entropy must rise. Yet what is true of one force should be true of them all - there should be an entropy rise due to an increase in any force carrying particles. Specific entropy therefore should be the ratio of force carrying particles to protons - the photon to proton ratio was an over-simplification. As any force acts, the specific entropy rises, and so does the universe's entropy. Yet there are problems with this view of gravity, The problem lies in accepting the books' claim that star formation causes an entropy contradiction, because matter is getting more organised. This is clearly irrelevant, because the laws of thermodynamics deal purely with energy change. The second law definitely allows star formation - gravitational energy becomes energy with greater entropy (usually heat) as the star forms and the excess heat is radiated away as light to decrease the heat difference created. The arrangement of matter has really no bearing on the energy changes and thus entropy. Even where matter seems to exert a force to create energy changes, it is not caused by the matter, but by the energy in the matter. Pressure, for example, can be used to do work, but is caused by the kinetic energy of the particles, not the particles themselves. On the same line, Although Boltzmann did his initial experiments on gases and extrapolated the principles he learnt from them when formulating the second law, mixing gases is not an example of the second law itself. Rather, it shows the statistical processes involved in governing the second law, and the books should claim only this. The insights gained in both gravity and entropy are clearly important. In particular, giving gravity a good theoretical basis is vital, as gravity is the only force strong enough to act between stars and so hold the universe together.
However, the question remains - whatever state of entropy we have at present, the entropy of a black hole is much greater, so why isn't there a black hole here? Although they take time to form, there have been at least 15 million years available (current estimate according to the big bang theory, though estimates vary from a thousand years to infinitely long). The best explanation is the anthropic principle. If there was a black hole here, no humans would be there to question its absence - so there can't be a black hole. The last question could only be answered within the framework of a universe model (in this case the big bang theory). Few further conclusions can be drawn from entropy alone without having an idea of how the universe has evolved. For this reason, we will now look at how entropy works in the context of different models of the universe.
Imagine now that the boat is a star, the lake space, and the observer earth. Instead of the person regularly creating ripples, imagine the hydrogen in the star giving off particular frequencies of light its emission spectrum. If the star is at rest relative to earth, that is what we would expect to see from hydrogen. If, however, the star is moving, the frequency of the light we observe is different. If the star comes towards earth, the frequency becomes higher, but it decreases if the star is moving away. As blue has a high and red a low frequency, these changes are called blue-shifts and red- shifts respectively. As the emission spectrum of hydrogen is the same throughout the universe, an observer on earth can work out the speed and direction the stars are travelling relative to us. Scientists have found that all the galaxies in the universe are rushing away from each other - the universe is expanding. Yet the red-shift violates the first law of thermodynamics. We must resolve this problem.
As this is evidently true, the energy change in the red-shift equals the change in kinetic energy relative to the photon source. This vindicates my hypothesis that the two are the same, although more work is required to prove the matter beyond all reasonable doubt.
must be spatially finite. As space-time has no boundaries, this means the universe is curved in on itself, like the surface of a sphere. If the universe is flat, then space-time is also said to be flat, and the universe is infinite in size. To my mind this raises a contradiction. The larger an object is, the less dense it needs to be to have the same gravitational attraction as a smaller object. An infinitely large object would need an infinitesimally low density to have enough gravitational attraction to stop light escaping. As the observable universe has a density larger than zero and the universe as a whole is homogenous (a key assumption in the big bang theory), an infinite universe would immediately become a black hole. As a black hole is technically the same as a finite universe, even if an infinite universe existed in the past, it now would be finite. If the universe is open, even greater questions arise, as space-time is said to be warped 'like a saddle'. Apart from suffering from the same contradiction as the flat universe, there is no explanation why it should be shaped in this way, or what shapes it. In any case, as I see it, there is no reason why an open universe should not be spatially finite, but still expand forever.
Although in my opinion the idea of an infinite universe makes little sense, I will include it when considering entropy in a big bang universe, in case my argument is flawed.
1. As the universe contracts, the second law of thermodynamics reverses, so then entropy always decreases. With a little thought, this is clearly wrong. As the law of thermodynamics reverses, it no longer becomes favourable for objects to fall together, so the law of gravity reverses. Thus the universe no longer recontracts. The only way to resolve this paradox is to say that entropy does not reverse. 2. The second singularity is more disordered than the first, so there is no entropy contradiction. Unfortunately, a property of black holes is that all black holes of a given mass, rotation etc. are indistinguishable. So to be more disordered, the second singularity needs to have gained mass or kinetic energy, all of which is forbidden by the first law of thermodynamics. Luckily for the big bang theory generally, the open universe model has far fewer problems.
However, there are problems with this oscillating universe model. Firstly, if the specific entropy is always increasing, and infinite cycles have already gone by, where are all the photons? There should be an infinite amount of them. Similarly, if black holes form, they would not be destroyed, so after infinite cycles, we should easily be able detect them - which we cannot - which provides further evidence that this is not the correct model. And when all has been said and done, to break down the elements formed in previous oscillations to hydrogen, the temperature during the bounce must reach 10 million degrees Kelvin. A temperature this extreme would destroy all information in the universe, so the same universe hardly endures, nor does one cycle really follow another - if nothing can pass from one universe to the next, what difference does it make to us if they exist or not? In the next section I will turn my attention to the current view of how the universe was created; to Einstein's cosmological constant and to inflation. The Cosmological Constant When Einstein had completed his theory of relativity, the dominant view of the world was that the universe is static and unchanging. To reconcile his equations with this view, he added the 'cosmological constant' to his equations - a move he was later to regard as "my greatest blunder." The cosmological constant is the counterpart of gravity. It exerts a repulsive effect on distant stars proportional to the square of their distance. Einstein was convinced that this would counterbalance gravity, allowing the universe to remain unchanging. Unfortunately, there were two fundamental flaws. The first was mathematical; Einstein had devided both sides of his equation by a constant which could possibly be zero - if it turned out to be zero, the model would automatically be invalidated. Secondly the universe was highly unstable. If it expanded or contracted slightly, one of the forces would be greater than the other and force the universe away from equilibrium, either to a singularity or to infinity. Furthermore, the cosmological constant comes into conflict with observational evidence of the universe - no red-shifts were predicted, there is no explanation for the background radiation. In terms of thermodynamics, too, the model was lacking. If the universe remained static infinitely, then it should have reached thermodynamic equilibrium by now - there would be no available energy and we would not exist. However, Einstein's speculations convinced the public, because the idea was fundamentally attractive - a spherical space-time, static and eternally unchanging. Scientists, however, spotted the flaws in Einstein's argument, detailed above. In particular, Lamaitre showed that the universe model was wrong and that the universe was either expanding or contracting. As a response to Lamaitre's work, Einstein rejected the cosmological constant in his equations. Ironically, Lamaitre and other cosmologists did not drop the cosmological constant so readily. It was convenient, and they could use it to slow down or speed up the universe's evolution as they pleased. However, the cosmological constant only really seized the limelight with the invention of inflation, as vacuum energy in inflation is formally equivalent to the repulsion force. We will investigate the inflation idea next.
What is Inflation? In 1978, a modification of the big bang model called 'inflation' was proposed, which solved some of its problems. I will not mention these problems, because I want to concentrate on the entropy of the models. According to the theory of inflation, shortly after the big bang the universe went through a period in which it expanded massively, after which it returned to a more leisurely pace of expansion. The rapid expansion epoch took a portion of space the size of a grapefruit and expanded it to a size bigger than the observable universe, after which the energy powering the inflation was lost as a big release of particles with mass. Calculations show the mass released is exactly that required for a closed universe model. This theory appears to have a few contradictions. In particular, to expand this fast, objects must have been moving faster than the speed of light. This objection is resolved in that, although objects in space cannot travel faster than the speed of light, space itself can expand this fast, carrying the objects with it. Secondly, there is no proven mechanism for creating this mass expansion. Einstein's corrective force was used initially, but this would still be expanding the universe now. A concept called false vacuum has been dreamt up to explain the effect. In essence, when the big bang took place, there was only one type of superforce. As the universe grew, this split into the four forces we have today - gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. The energy released during this split drove inflation. Unfortunately, until we can perform experiments at 1028K there is no way in which to prove the theory as either correct or incorrect. Finally, there is no observational evidence for inflation. One of the few claims it makes - that the universe is a closed one - is flatly contradicted by the evidence. Additionally, the problems that it solves can usually be solved in a much simpler way than by inventing a brand new theory of how the universe began. However, it is still important to see how inflation fares when facing up to the laws of thermodynamics. The Entropy of Inflation The entropy of the inflation model suffers from many of the problems that beset the model of the closed big bang. Although it manages to resolve some of these problems it creates others as well. The first effect it manages to explain is how the universe overcame its gravitational attraction. When the universe had moved away from the singularity sufficiently, inflation took over, stretching space and as such separating all the matter by a sufficient distance to prevent the universe falling back into a singularity immediately. It has less luck solving the problem of the universe not being able to increase in entropy from big bang to big crunch. There are two possibilities.
1. Energy is returned to the false vacuum at the big crunch. This clearly would not solve the problem at all, as there could be no entropy change from one singularity to the other - the contradiction still stands. 2. Energy is not returned to the false vacuum. This poses a contradiction in terms of the first law of thermodynamics, as energy should not be able to be created out of nothing. It also asks questions of the big bang theory, namely where the energy came from in the first place, why the false vacuum existed at the time of the big bang, and what the difference between the two singularities, is to allow a false vacuum to form in one and not the other. If the problems with the second option can be solved, then inflation works very neatly indeed, in terms of thermodynamics. Inflation created the highly ordered initial universe, by spreading matter out so far apart that non-uniformities became uniform. The energy of the negative gravity and positive matter cancel, so matter was formed without violating the first law, and the universe will become a true singularity in the big crunch, when it will have maximum entropy. In effect, inflation created and wound up the universe. But there are more models of the universe than just variations of the big bang. I will investigate these now. Steady State Theory In 1948, some cosmologists who were unhappy with the big bang proposed a radical new model of the universe, based on the idea that the universe was not only homogenous in space (a fundamental concept in most models of the universe) but in time. This means, as the universe expands and galaxies separate, new galaxies form to fill the gaps created. This theory appealed to many, as it had none of the problems associated with the big bang - what preceded it, what caused it, and so forth. Furthermore, it explained most of the effects that the big bang did - the red-shift is explained by the expansion, the background radiation is the light from former stars red-shifted. Furthermore, the theory requires only a minor modification in the laws of relativity, and the rate of matter creation is too low to be observable in any case. Observational evidence proved to be the undoing of the steady state theory. The number of quasars increases when looking back into the past, violating the perfect cosmological principle. Furthermore, as time is infinite, another intelligent species should already have colonised the observable universe, which is obviously not the case. In terms of thermodynamics, the steady state theory resolves some problems and generates others. It allows the universe to have existed for an infinite time, because as entropy increases, more matter appears which increases the order again - the new matter is an inexhaustible supply of negative entropy. In the same way, this balancing of entropy with new matter could be the very reason for space's expansion. However, the steady state theory breaks both the first and second law of thermodynamics with the matter increases, although novel ways around the problem have been suggested - for example, the universe could be like a massive black hole, which absorbs extra matter when it expands. Even so, though, the matter increase is, to my mind, too small to balance the entropy increases caused by, for example, the stars burning.
The steady state theory flourished in the sixties, but today, few people believe it. In contrast, the theory I will outline next has been believed for millenniums - that god created the universe. Entropy and God If god is omnipotent, would he obey his own laws? Considering the laws of entropy, it seems he probably does not. I decided to take an irreligious look at religion. An overriding feature of many creation stories is that chaos is overcome by god(s), which heralds the beginning of the universe. In other words, the gods' actions formed the universe, by decreasing its entropy enough to free up energy. Greek legends speak of Cronos (the father of the gods) overcoming chaos to found the universe, while the bible says that 'the earth was without form and void' before god created it. Other cultures limit their gods to creating the universe in a low entropy state. Madagascan legend tells us that Zanahary made earth but left it empty (Ratovoantany created everything on it), and Zulu myths say that Unkulunkulu evolved alone in emptiness before creating men from grass. A further important feature of creation is the separation of land from sea - another entropy contradiction. The bible says that god parted them after he had separated heaven from earth, and New Zealand was allegedly pulled out of the ocean floor by Maui with a magic fishhook. In other religions, the gods emerged from the waters instead. The Egyptian god Re brought forth the first pair of gods as he emerged from the waters. In Babylon, pairs of gods rose to the surface as the waters of Abzu and Tiamat met. Most, but not all gods, conserve entropy in that they allow only one universe, which degenerates from a perfect beginning (symbolised in the bible by the eviction of Adam and Eve from paradise). This is not true of Hinduism or Buddhism, in which creation ebbs and flows on a vast scale. In Hinduism, this is symbolised by the god Brahma sleeping and waking - each universe is a single dream. The question most creation stories leave unanswered is the question of what will happen at the end of the universe, preferring to let it continue infinitely or indefinitely. Even when a definite end is mentioned, as in the bible, there is no definite date for the end - perhaps this is god's way of telling us that we have nothing to fear in the future. Thanks to entropy, there is agreement that the universe must end. Some disagree, so I will look at the views of those who believe we have little to worry about concerning entropy. The Positive View Firstly, many believe that entropy has been overgeneralised in applying it to the universe as a whole. On the basis of a few experiments done with modest containers of gases, people have leap-frogged into believing the universe is dying. For one thing gases are already highly disordered - on mixing solids, there is no entropy increase. And if oil and water are mixed, they separate causing an entropy decrease - so we shouldn't let these experiments determine all our assumptions. In addition, entropy ignores forces. If you have a plasma, the ions in it will form filaments due to magnetic attractions again entropy has dropped. Secondly, if entropy exists, it may exist in more than one form - disorder of matter, entropy in gravity, specific entropy (electromagnetic) and so on. Although entropy in all these forms tends to
increase, we could use one form to decrease the entropy of another, and reverse the process to decrease the overall entropy, as shown below - thus the overall entropy problem is not insurmountable.
An extension of this approach is the idea that different factors take over at different points of the universe's evolution - where one entropy cycle ends, another begins. Tracing the evolution of the universe so far, one can imagine it starting in a plasma like state with only Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism applying. The plasma formed filaments, which in time evolved to the filaments of stars seen in the universe today. These filaments created matter imbalances which allowed gravity to take over. The gravity compressed matter into stars, allowing nuclear forces to take over, and so on. When one entropy cycle ends, another more efficient one will take the universe further - the maximum entropy always increases. A further approach is to go back to the magnet shuffling example. When will the magnets be completely disordered? After transferring them three times? Thirteen times? Thirty or three hundred times? With such a number of atoms as the universe has, the answer to when they would all be disordered is probably never - there is always somewhere that can get less ordered, so entropy always rises. This means that there is always some energy which can be harnessed and used to do work. A similar approach considers the always changing size of the universe. If the universe ever reached thermodynamic equilibrium, the increase in the universe's size would disturb the equilibrium, and so entropy rises would continue. A different approach tackles entropy from a new direction. It claims that although order is decreasing, the complexity (or organisation) of the remaining order is increasing. Compare, for example, a block of marble with a statue - the block of marble is bigger and has more order, but the statue is more complex. The continuation of life, from this point of view, does not depend on minimising entropy (although this comes into it) but maximising the complexity gained from it. A quite novel approach is to disprove entropy altogether. If black holes form, they must increase entropy by doing so. Quantum physics demands that they release radiation. Losing radiation, they lose mass and therefore energy. This means that eventually black holes are destroyed, so entropy must have reversed. If the laws of thermodynamics are true, then this theory states that either quantum physics (the most reliable theory anyone has ever discovered) is false or black holes (and thus all variations of the big bang theory) don't exist. As the big bang model was built on the assumptions of entropy, and most scientists would back quantum physics rather than entropy, this theory would conclude that, one way or another, the laws of thermodynamics are wrong. Finally, even if the universe should be destroyed, there would have to be a mechanism of sorts to destroy it. Since everything which exists, exists in this universe, the destruction mechanism must also be within the universe. So the mechanism would either destroy itself in the process, in which case the destruction would stop, or not destroy itself, in which case it would be left in the universe. Either way, there will always remain something of the universe.
Conclusion and Evaluation According to investigation the most likely overall theory seems to be the big bang theory - all the other theories contain several entropy contradictions and need extra effects (like the creation of matter or a false vacuum) which have not been observed. In particular, the open universe model contains least entropy contradictions, and agrees with observational evidence - the only problem it needs to solve is how the gravitational attraction of the big bang singularity could have been overcome. Whatever the model of the universe, the universe itself is already some way into the heat death. However, entropy is currently rising so slowly that mankind will probably never live long enough to suffer the loss of all available energy into heat. .