The universe is losing useful energy

[HydrogenBond]

Here is an idea that came to me the other day. Energy can not be created or destroyed. However, according to the second law, the entropy of the universe will always increase. Since entropy needs to absorb energy to increase, does the second law of increasing entropy remove useable energy from the universe?

 

For example, if we expand a gas, it will get colder as the entropy increase, absorbs thermal energy. Now the gas is colder with less usable energy left within the gas, and more energy irretrievable, as increasing entropy.

[Essay]

Ahhh, ...ideas....

 

I enjoy your ideas, HB.

You seem to be on to the physical expressions for the quantity that we have reified as entropy - irreversibility of reactions, and useability (or more accurately, un-useability) of energy.

 

So yes, the universe is "losing" useful energy (from our point of view), but the wasted energy does become useful as heat somewhere else, eventually - simply prolonging the final "heat death" of the universe.

 

I don't really follow your description; sorta like an adiabatic change, but I think you have a sign or two reversed at some points, but whichever....

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Would this work as an example of losing (or not losing) useful energy?

 

As we walk, lots of energy is "wasted" (irreversibly) being put into wear-and-tear on the carpet, shoes, and our bodily tissues; and should even be measurable as heat, friction, or entropy (imho).

 

If our shoes were devised with (for lack of a soundly engineered design) little shock absorbers that translated the motion (from the force of each step) into electrical energy (to charge up an ipod?), then we'd be taking advantage of entropy by distributing it through some dissipative systems that weren't previously avaiable, right? The final entropy would be the same, with less wear-and-tear on the original parts, but more heat coming out of the ipod.

 

These days, with nano-structural engineering, you could build a fabric (or a shoe sole) that generated electricity when flexed - with lots of little ratchets, levers, gears, and nanoturbines - I'd expect.

 

Is that sorta like what you're talking about? I've been meaning to build a pair of those shoes for years, but I've never gotten an ipod.

 

~

[HydrogenBond]

Entropy increase needs to absorb energy. If we lower entropy we can get the energy back. But with entropy on the increase, according to the second law, we should get back less and less energy or more energy is irretrievably lost.

 

Gravity can turn a mass cloud, composed of matter with high degrees of freedom or entropy into a restricted volume. This lowers entropy and can retrieve lost energy as heat. This will take gravitational work to regain the energy. But with net entropy always on the rise, within the universe, is the mass-energy of all objects that gravity can lower entropy on, decreasing over time?

 

The next question is where is the increasing entropy, that is absorbing the irretrievable energy implicit of the second law? Dark matter is a higher entropy state than light matter. This is inferred, since dark matter is much less definitive and should have more degrees of freedom. Does expanding space-time also reflect the irretrievable energy or increasing entropy, by offering more degrees of freedom in space and time, by stretching these variables out? Could aspects of the universal red shift reflect irretrievable energy absorbed into entropy? If we expand a gas, its temperature or IR signal will red shift or cool, with the energy difference accounted for by the entropy increase. But in the universe case, the entropy has more degrees of freedom and can use other wavelengths.