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by hannasanarion 2732 days ago
No, not really. Entropy only goes in one direction. The universe began in a state of complexity and diversity, and it's history since then has been the story of flattening, cooling, mixing, evening out into boring eternal sameness.
1 comments
posterboy 2731 days ago
That only counts for closed systems. Does that pertain to our universe? We don't know; We can not see a limit, to say the least, and we have absolutely no agreeable model for any kind of edge. The idea that U closes in on itself, like the surface of a baloon, without any borders, is indeed reminiscent of hindu's Darma idea. It is rather descriptive of our mode of thought: cyclic and self centered; focused on origin and phobic of ...

end of story

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hannasanarion 2730 days ago
The universe is by definition a closed system. The universe is all that exists, if there is something that could have an effect on it, it would be part of the universe.

The universe is expanding, distances are getting bigger, and there is no reason to think that it'll suddenly decide to stop and get small again.

Balloon theory was blown up by the discovery of an increasing cosmological constant (aka dark energy).

Once a fire has burned to ash, you can't turn it back into wood again. Cyclical time is wishful thinking, contradicted by all evidence.

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posterboy 2729 days ago
You are making the mistaking of supposing you conclusion as hypothesis, don't you. Because:

> The universe is by definition a closed system.

There is no de-finit-ion, that's my hole point (excuse the pun, it fits better than any other time)

> The universe is all that exists, if there is something that could have an effect on it, it would be part of the universe.

Yes sure, but what if it's endless? That's not closed in the sense of thermodynamics I don't think.

To conclude from your statement, that the universe is a closed system, kind of requires to presume universal entropy increase, in case of infinity. I can't do the maths though, so I might be wrong. It's just a hunch.

> The universe is expanding, distances are getting bigger,

The visible ...

background radiation may invite inference, but really you get interference.

> and there is no reason to think that it'll suddenly decide to stop and get small again.

In a e.g. 10^50 years would not exactly be suddenly

> Once a fire has burned to ash, you can't turn it back into wood again. Cyclical time is wishful thinking, contradicted by all evidence.

I don't disagree.

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