Thermodynamics and Cosmology

[coldcreation]

“The test of extrapolation to the most distant future does not, I think, disclose any definite weakness in the present system of science—in particular, in the second law of thermodynamics on which physical science so largely relies. It is true that the extrapolation foretells that the material universe will some day arrive at a state of dead sameness and so virtually come to an end; to my mind that is a rather happy avoidance of a nightmare of eternal repetition. It is the opposite extrapolation towards the past which gives real cause to suspect a weakness in the present conceptions of science. The beginning seems to present insurmountable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural. We may have to let it go at that…Instead of honestly facing the intricacies of our problem, we may be led to think that its difficulties have been solved when they have only been swept over the boundary. Sweeping them back and back, the pile increases until it forms an unclimbable barrier. Perhaps it is this barrier that we call “the beginning.” (Eddington, A. 1958, The Expanding Universe, pp. 124-125)

 

Nothing valid is created without nature.

 

Coldcreation

[Tormod]

I agree to your comment.

 

But - the Eddington quote is almost 50 years old. Lots of things have happened since then...it would be interesting to hear what the good man would have to say today.

[coldcreation]

I agree to your comment.

 

But - the Eddington quote is almost 50 years old. Lots of things have happened since then...it would be interesting to hear what the good man would have to say today.

 

What has happened, what has changed since Eddington's words? I'd like to hear what Einstein would have to say about the new cosmological constant alsmost a century after its introduction. It is already well known what he thought of BB cosmology (the same as Eddington).

[coldcreation]

The entropy problem: Entropy is a thermodynamic quality of matter, often defined by the degree of disorder (randomness) of a system. It is known to increase with time. When applied to the universe as a whole, the entropy should have been very low to begin with, and increased with time. By deduction, the universe must have been a very ordered system in its very early stages. Why? Entropy is essentially a conserved quantity in an expanding universe. The conclusion must be that the entropy of the universe has always been huge. The standard models do not explain why (Pagels 1985).

 

Hmmm

[UncleAl]

One diagnostic weakness of a crackpot is recruitment of selective support from obsolete and discredited literature.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_Bound

Message-ID: [email protected]

 

"As Jacobson showed in 1995, the mere imposition of the Bekenstein bound in conjunction with the laws of thermodynamics implies general relativity."

 

1995 is more recent than 1958. Note that while alive Eddington crushed the career of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar - 1983 Physics Nobel Prize - because Eddington could not comprehend the mathematics of black holes. Eddington also demanded a steady-state universe that is mathematically impossible and empirical crap. Eddington was grievously incorrect on both counts by simple observation.

 

A steady state universe is particulary egregious for trivial reasons. Work out the average time an infinitely sharp pencil, balanced perfectly upright, will take to fall. Consider a pendulum of length 1 and mass 1. Specify the orientation by the angle, x(t), measured from the position with the bob vertically below the suspension point. The potential energy is

 

V = g * (1-cosx) = 2g * (sin(x/2))^2

 

Set the initial conditions

 

x(0) = 0, x'(0) = 2g

 

The energy

 

E = 1/2 (x')^2 + 2g * (sin (x/2))^2

dx/dt = sqrt (4g (1 - (sin (x/2))^2)

 

Then

              /               1                 
dt = sqrt(   __________________  )   dx
                 4g(1-(sin(x/2))^2      /

The integral of dx from x = 0 to x = a diverges as a--> pi.

 

What does this say about the pencil balanced on its point? About any steady state condition located at a maximum or saddlepoint rather than at a true minimum?

[Little Bang]

Your right Unk, no situation could ever be balanced forever. good point

[Tormod]

What has happened, what has changed since Eddington's words? I'd like to hear what Einstein would have to say about the new cosmological constant alsmost a century after its introduction. It is already well known what he thought of BB cosmology (the same as Eddington).

 

Yes, I would like that too. How does that change anything?

[coldcreation]

Your right Unk, no situation could ever be balanced forever. good point

 

 

Interestingly enough the favored Friedmann model with a critical density expands outwards at a rate that precisely balances the inward force of gravity. That is like a pencil balancing on it head forever. That was the origin of the so-called fine-tuning problem. Fortunately the supernovae Type Ia observations (interpreted as acceleration) show non-linearity, ruling out The critical Friedmann model, and so too the fine-tuning problem. Great, one less thing to worry about. Well, almost. Inflation predicted a one to one expansion ratio, a flat universe with fine-tuning.

 

There is no fine tuning problem in a non-expanding universe. That's an old myth propagated by disgruntled chemists and the likes. That problem arose 300 years ago with Newtonian mechanics. There is one thing though missing from contemporary physics that should be recognized before the fine-tuning problem disappears for good, regardless of whether the model is based on a stable or unstable background.

 

I recommend someone start a new thread on the fine-tuning problem of modern cosmology. Here, the topic under severe scrutiny in the thermodynamic connection to cosmological models. Thermodynamics is non-theory based, and as such is perfectly suited to resolve some of the deepest problems of our understanding of physical processes and evolution.

 

I found another old quote, older than Eddington's. In his Treatise on Thermodynamics (1945), Max Planck put in writing an idea about the second law of thermodynamics and the increase of entropy: “The gist of the second law has nothing to do with experiment; the law asserts briefly that there exists in nature a quantity which always changes in the same way in all natural processes.”

 

We say that entropy is a time-dependent property because the state of a system cannot change instantaneously. Entropy differences are always positive; it is an additive property, often referred to as the degree of disorder or randomness of a system, but can also be identified with diversity or variety.

 

The increase of entropy with time clashes with big bang cosmology. Why? Because entropy was supposed to be at its maximum value just after the BB, in the hot expanding fireball.

 

If you ask me, entropy should decrease when the clocks are reversed, other wise entropy increase is violated in the direction of time.

 

I'm usually an optimist, but I fail to see how modern cosmology can reconcile empirical thermodynamic issues with the canonical hot big bang cold dark matter kooky energy theory. Maybe I simply have not yet been enlightened. Like my philosophy professor once said “I don’t doubt His existence, but I’m still waiting for His arrival.”

 

I doubt His existence, and I am not waiting for His arrival.

 

coldcreation

[questor]

CC, maybe you don't need to wait. maybe He has always been here and maybe many of the things none of us understand will have a true cosmological constant and that constant will be the force that created it all. at that time you can name this force whatever you will, but you will have to admit a transcendent presence. i really can't understand why so many scientists argue against a creative force, when evidence for, far outweighs evidence against. i notice that you frequently use the word create in your dissertations, so i assume

a creation needs a creator?

[coldcreation]

CC, maybe you don't need to wait. maybe He has always been here and maybe many of the things none of us understand will have a true cosmological constant and that constant will be the force that created it all. at that time you can name this force whatever you will, but you will have to admit a transcendent presence. i really can't understand why so many scientists argue against a creative force, when evidence for, far outweighs evidence against. i notice that you frequently use the word create in your dissertations, so i assume

a creation needs a creator?

 

Questor, the subject of this thread is the relationship between the laws of thermodynamics and cosmology, or cosmology to thermodynamics. Material creation requires no transcendental Superior creative force. You see, in a universe where there is no beginning there is no need for a creator. I do agree though that according to the canonical hot big bang, or a primeval atom hypothesis, call IT what you will, first proposed by the Belgian Catholic priest George Lemaître, there is room for your super force. But because I do not adhere to that concept, by direct implication, I do not either adhere to the Superior (He) Force with or without a beard.

 

I recommend a different thread. You will not find what you seek here. Why? Gravity is not a super force, electromagnetism is not a superior force, atomic forces are not superior forces, the cosmological constant is certainly not a force, let alone a superior one, general relativity has no superior force at work, quantum mechanics has no superior force, and thermodynamics has to do with the conservation of energy, the increase of entropy with time, and the unattainability of the absolute zero of temperatures on the Kelvin scale, NOT a superior force.

 

Creation does not need a creator. Imagination and creativity creates a Creator.

 

good luck.

 

coldc...

[coldcreation]

Ilya Prigogine, a prominent expert in the field, expresses the view-point that ”the laws of physics describe an idealized world that is quite different from the unstable, evolving world in which we live…we can no longer associate the arrow of time only with an increase of disorder. Recent developments in nonequilibrium physics and chemistry point in the opposite direction. They show unambiguously that the arrow of time is a source of order…Irreversibility leads to both order and disorder…they do not correspond to approximations added to the basic laws. Irreversible processes play a fundamental constructive role in nature.” (1996, p. 26)

 

Prigogine wrote in relation to the big bang on page 184: “From the start, the universe would have appeared as a thermodynamic system far from equilibrium, with instabilities and bifurcations.”

 

Wow. Maybe Questor is right. How else could something start-out with entropy S at a maximum.

 

coldc...

[questor]

C.C., you said:

'' Why? Gravity is not a super force, electromagnetism is not a superior force, atomic forces are not superior forces, the cosmological constant is certainly not a force, let alone a superior one, general relativity has no superior force at work, quantum mechanics has no superior force, and thermodynamics has to do with the conservation of energy, the increase of entropy with time, and the unattainability of the absolute zero of temperatures on the Kelvin scale, NOT a superior force. ''

 

i have to disagree with you. any force that permeates the universe or laws that govern

the activites of the cosmos in my opinion are superior forces. would you call them minor forces? you keep saying that i'm on the wrong thread and yet i think it not too hard to imagine that whatever power was responsible for or put into motion the formation of the universe is the driving or superior force. your assumption that things ''just are'', with no beginning or no end is interesting, but has not yet been validated. if we could understand consciousness or the life force, and what energizes these processes, we would probably be closer to the final solution.

[coldcreation]

It has been known since the work of Henri Poincaré (1854-1912), the French mathematician famed as the founder of algebraic topology and the use of his theory on differential equations in celestial mechanics, that dynamical systems are characterized in terms of the kinetic energy of its constituents plus the potential energy due to their interactions.

 

Furthermore, as Ilya Prigogine (1996) informs us, interacting fields lead to resonance patterns that “wander erratically” through regions of space, increasing entropy, leading to long-range correlations, chaos and the breaking of time symmetry—irreversibly—that acts over very long time-scales and that profoundly alter the macroscopic state of the system, of the universe.

 

More vintage Prigogine:

 

“…phase transitions are ultimately defined by the thermodynamic limit…Phase transitions correspond to emerging properties. They are meaningful only at the level of populations, and not single particles. This contention is somewhat analogous to that which is based on Poincaré resonances. Persistent interactions mean that we cannot take a part of the system and consider it in isolation. It is at this global level, at the level of populations, that the symmetry between past and future is broken, and science can recognize the flow of time. This solves a long-standing puzzle. It is indeed in macroscopic physics that irreversibility and probability are the most conspicuous.” (1996, p. 45).

[coldcreation]

.

 

 

 

 

This discussion on thermodynamics and cosmology will be continued in this thread, as it was off topic in the Big bang blasted thread.

 

I repeat here one post from that thread. Other posts that lead up to it can be seen at the link above.

 

The main brunt of the discussion has to do with the second law and its relevance to stationary, steady state, nonexpanding, infinite universe models vs. the standard model where the universe is thought to be only 13.7 Gyr old.

 

 

 

... What I have said is "any change in an infinite universe over infinite years would become infinite change" ...

 

Either no cosmological value changes over time or the ones that do approach zero or infinity. What we are saying is how can your SSU be timeless and evolve - that doesn't work. You have to have either no-change or a starting point.

 

Do you see why an infinite time-scale doesn't work with a universe that has changing cosmological values?

 

 

 

Recall that between 1918 and 1925, while MacMillan’s cosmogony was being developed, the notion of a stationary universe was unanimously accepted. Where his contentious testimonial differed from conventional cosmology was in its refusal of increasing entropy, of the continuing irreversible degradation of matter and energy associated with and implied by the second law of thermodynamics, which would ultimately lead to a lifeless, inert and unorganized universe: the so-called heat-death of the universe commonly believed as inevitable at that time. The question was essentially: Why had the entropy (or degradation of energy) not yet reached its maximum?

 

Although MacMillan’s scientific beliefs were based to a certain extent on common sense, he refused the validity of Einstein’s theory of relativity—exclusively mathematical world-views were to him a “dangerous thing in cosmology.” His primary goal had been to inject optimism in a field stricken by the haunting notions of stellar death and universal demise so prevalent in the minds of his contemporaries: “The forbidding picture of the galaxy as a dismal, dreary graveyard of dead stars,” he wrote in 1920, referring to his own cosmological model, “fades away from our sight; and in its stead we see an indefinite continuation of our present active, living universe with its never-ending ebb and flow of energy.” (see Kragh, 1996, p. 144).

 

In the 1920’s, partially stimulated by conversations with Einstein, Nernst shifted his attention from nitrate fertilizer explosives (amongst other things) toward cosmological considerations. And despite his familiarity with warfare and explosives he sought a solution that would evade the Helmholtz-Boltzmann miserable heat-death (Wärmetod) of the universe, allegedly forecast by the second law of thermodynamics.

 

Nernst investigated an assortment of possibilities, arguing that cosmological questions about the beginning and the end of the universe were scientifically meaningless. By postulating fluctuations in what he called the null-point energy of the ether (die Nullpunktsenergie des Lichtäthers), or zero-point energy of space as we prefer to put it, he rationalized that the universe could exist in a steady state provided there was a balance between energy degradation [entropy] and energy creation, as seen in supernovae explosions and star formation, and in the stages of stellar classifications ranging from new to steady state systems. The energy for these new creations would be drawn from the null-point energy of the ether [something in space]. (See Hiebert, 1978).

 

There are other ways, too, of doing away with the old 'heat-death" scenario. I will be back with at least one method later.

 

 

 

 

CC

[Erasmus00]

.

Nernst investigated an assortment of possibilities, arguing that cosmological questions about the beginning and the end of the universe were scientifically meaningless. By postulating fluctuations in what he called the null-point energy of the ether (die Nullpunktsenergie des Lichtäthers), or zero-point energy of space as we prefer to put it, he rationalized that the universe could exist in a steady state provided there was a balance between energy degradation [entropy] and energy creation

 

But today we have a much better understanding of pair creation in vacuum (so called zero-point energy). I'm reasonably certain such an idea wouldn't be that tenable today.

 

Also, I believe that observation doesn't allow this. By looking down the lightcone, we can observe that entropy IS growing with time, and we have yet to witness a violation of conservation of energy.

 

Granted, you can still prove me wrong. Present a field theory (coupled to classical gravity) that allows for energy fluctuations to precisely balance the expected entropy growth.

-Will

[coldcreation]

But today we have a much better understanding of pair creation in vacuum (so called zero-point energy). I'm reasonably certain such an idea wouldn't be that tenable today.

 

Also, I believe that observation doesn't allow this. By looking down the lightcone, we can observe that entropy IS growing with time, and we have yet to witness a violation of conservation of energy.

 

Granted, you can still prove me wrong. Present a field theory (coupled to classical gravity) that allows for energy fluctuations to precisely balance the expected entropy growth.

-Will

 

 

 

The heat-death of the universe is thought to occur when the universe reaches a state of maximum entropy. This supposedly would happen when all available energy (e.g., from a stellar source) has moved to at place of less energy (e.g., to a colder space). One could extrapolate extremely far into the future that no more energy (work) can be extracted within the universe. Thus, since heat stops flowing, no more energy can be acquired from heat transfer. leaving entropy at a maximum and leaving the universe virtually dead.

 

 

First, there is still an open question as to what constitutes a closed system. By definition, an infinite universe is an open system. But at the same time an infinite universe has no "outside" of it, so it is effectively a closed system. Assuming that entropy is a nondecreasing property in an infinite universe, then, an easy way out of the heat death scenario is to state that entropy never reaches a maximum. That indeed is my contention. As long as gravity according to general relativity remains operational in this universe, there will always be interactions between constituents of the universe, and so there will always be entropy as a generally increasing property.

 

But the origin of this discussion was not based on what would happen deep into the future. It was hypothesized by modest and Erasmus00 (using the Helmhotz-Boltzmann heat-death argument) that since a steady state universe has already been around an infinite amount of time, that entropy should already have reached a maximum (and thus according to modest, there would be no more change possible).

 

I obviously do not agree with this scenario.

 

The universe could have been in its lowest possible energy/entropy state (this would be the ground-state of the vacuum, a state of zero-point energy fluctuations in space) since minus infinity. The state of lowest available and potential energy could indeed last an eternity. Observations show that the universe is no longer in the ground-energy state. So there are at least two options available. (1) There has been a very slow progressive increase of entropy over time. (2) A phase transition (or several) would change the primordial ground-state for good, causing entropy to increase generally.

 

Without going into detail, Nernst was basically correct is his assessment of the problem and its resolution.

 

By 1921 Nernst had developed a cosmological world picture, however provisional and qualitative, of an eternal cosmic evolution in an infinite, self-perpetuating stationary universe with creation of matter generated from the large zero-point energy reservoir. It was the fluctuations of this concealed energy, known to exist from quantum theory, which would sporadically form arrangements leading to the generation and creation of radioactive atoms. Ultimately, the concept of thermodynamic "heat-death" was discarded from his theory as an artifact that had no bearing on the real world.

 

Most stationary, infinite, steady state-type cosmologies following the Nernst, MacMillan, Millikan models are based on the interpretation that the CMB is not a redshifted relic of a hot dense state when (and where) matter and radiation decoupled. The radiation is to a large extent independent of cosmic epoch (in that it has taken an infinite amount of time, with an energy level jump somewhere along the way) to reach the observed 2.726 K, and too, since the CMB is independent of redshift z, it's evolutionary trend is a non-linear regime.

 

Note: The temperature of the CMBR has taken since minus infinity to reach the observed 2.7 K. It could easily be calculated that as time tends to infinity in the future the CMB could possibly attain, say, 10 K. Hardly a heat death.

 

 

So we don’t have to worry about being baked in a blackbody cosmic microwave oven. The big bang stove has the future of the universe becoming colder with time, leaving us frozen and alone in an expanding refrigerator. The big freeze...

 

 

 

CC

[Pluto]

Hello All

 

In a recycling universe you do not need the complications.

 

Keeping it simple is the better way.

 

We have info on star formation and the varies states and the probable rejuvination.

 

We have info on compacted matter that is found in stars and some think its the same as found in the theoretical black holes. We see jets ejecting matter from these compacted bodies whether Neutron Stars or supermassive active compacted matter (Black Holes) reforming galaxies to elliptical(M87) to varies forms to sprial to elliptical and so on.

 

We can explain all these through observations in a real world.