True of False? When you've seen one entropy, you've seen them all. (Strange Universe Series - 2011).
Asked by
ETpro (
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October 2nd, 2011
It’s OK to just enter an opinion, but if you are able to discuss your reasons for thinking true or false, I would really appreciate the insight. I’m interested in exploring how things move from the strictly deterministic starting point where a perfect understanding of ALL initial conditions would give us direct insight into how a complex dynamical system will evolve over time, to its inevitable final condition per the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics? —absolute entropy.
This question is the 7th in the Strange Universe Series – 2011 questions. Here are the previous Strange Universe Series—2011 questions:
1—How do you envision space in more than 3 dimensions, then rotate it to see what happens?
2—How can we be certain the Uncertainty Principle is certain?
3—If the universe is infinite, how big is what it is expanding into?
4—In an expanding universe, how do separate galaxies manage to collide?
5—Since space is expanding and is linked to time, isn’t time expanding as well?
6—How can space expand between individual hydrogen atoms?
The entire Strange Universe 2010 Series of 20 questions can be found from here.
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I might be daft? But I’m not really sure how to answer this??? Do you want one answer or all answered? I’m sorry but I don’t get it. I mean I get entropy just not the way the question is worded.
We can’t assume a strictly deterministic starting point and we don’t know for sure how the universe will end. I have ‘answered’ each of your questions with one word…
1. Analogy
2. Uncertain
3. Nonsense
4. Gravity
5. Relatively
6. Imperceptibly
But this isn’t true: “I’m interested in exploring how things move from the strictly deterministic starting point ” The starting point isn’t known for anything.
@flutherother At least one reader fully grokked the question. :-)
@Rarebear True. Nor is it possible to know it. The measurement problem means that the moment we measure the initial conditions,nwe collapse its wave function and therefore it is no longer going to “do” what it would have done absent of any measurement. We have to consider this as an intellectual effort.
I actually am going somewhere with this. It’s not just the musings of a dilettante.
You are already aware of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, so there’s no need to remind you of that. Hypothetically, if we could know all initial conditions, we would need perfect equations as well if we were to perfectly predict the outcome. As you probably know, our existing quantum equations are accurate to between 10 and 30 decimal places, but beyond that they may not be. Measuring a chaotic system over time drastically increases the impact of these discrepancies.
So if you’ve seen one progression of entropy, have you seen them all? Yes and no. Each progression of entropy is unique, as there are orders of magnitude more decay patterns than there are events. However there are no subsets or special cases of entropy progressions (to my knowledge), since each is equally unpredictable. While the entropy of two systems may be equal at a given point in time, the arrangement of their mass/energy is unlikely to be the same. Like an overly complex chess game, there is one start and one end, but near infinite ways to get from one to the other.
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