Thread: ohhh I have a good question! Riddle me this...

The flow of energy through a system acts to organize that system.

The question of a collapsing cloud as being anti-entropic may lie in our viewing it as a singular (or isolated) event.

Which explains why you need a dvr for this sundays superbowl! Giants vs Pats!

Originally Posted by JFalz1024

1) I know that much. I wasn't referring to life in an organix sense but in the anti-entropy sense.
2) I thought life was anti-entropic since you are constantly being broken down and rebuilt by chemical reactions which normally wouldn't occur unless catalysts and other exothermic reactions are coupled with them.

My main focus here is the second LAW of thermodynamics. Ok so I found this on google, "The key insight was that the world is inherently active, and that whenever an energy distribution is out of equilibrium a potential or thermodynamic "force" (the gradient of a potential) exists that the world acts spontaneously to dissipate or minimize."

Why does the universe allow the H gas to collapse onto itself due to gravity and form stars when that seems clearly to me that in that entropy sense shouldn't happen. I wouldn't beat the dead horse on this if it weren't a LAW and not a theory. To put your logic into a thought experiment... I feel like your saying molecules become more ordered so that they can become disordered, or water flows up a mountain to come down the other side.

Star formation says to me gravity > entropy

The initial gas cloud will not begin to coalesce into any sort of star production without being acted on by an outside force. Example, gravity waves generated by supernovae. Once the cloud has be acted upon by this outside force the summation of quantitative entropy is changed thus preserving the second law of thermodynamics.

Originally Posted by JFalz1024

1) I know that much. I wasn't referring to life in an organix sense but in the anti-entropy sense.
2) I thought life was anti-entropic since you are constantly being broken down and rebuilt by chemical reactions which normally wouldn't occur unless catalysts and other exothermic reactions are coupled with them.

My main focus here is the second LAW of thermodynamics. Ok so I found this on google, "The key insight was that the world is inherently active, and that whenever an energy distribution is out of equilibrium a potential or thermodynamic "force" (the gradient of a potential) exists that the world acts spontaneously to dissipate or minimize."

Why does the universe allow the H gas to collapse onto itself due to gravity and form stars when that seems clearly to me that in that entropy sense shouldn't happen. I wouldn't beat the dead horse on this if it weren't a LAW and not a theory. To put your logic into a thought experiment... I feel like your saying molecules become more ordered so that they can become disordered, or water flows up a mountain to come down the other side.

Star formation says to me gravity > entropy

I am not a physicist, nor do I play one on T.V., from the little I understand the dissipation predicted by entropy is the end to which this Universe has been destined. In the short term (from the beginning until the next 140 Billion years, the trend will be that the anomalous organizations of matter such as galaxies, stars, cell phones, will continue, but not as widespread (in ratio of the overall volume of the universe) as we observe at this time. Eventually, the universe we see will continue to grow, the available matter will continue to go through phases where it gathers, and disorganize into heat and diffuse particles exuded by the remaining black holes. The size of the Universe will be so large, however, that...well sort of like the gas in a laser tube, rather diffuse.

If you read Roger Penrose's book, "The Road to Reality", you'll find his explanation about the entropy of gravitational effects--it goes contrariwise to our usual concept of entropy. Or see http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4744...nt_archive.pdf

Stars do not form unless large qty's of energy are present to compress enough dust/gas together to create a fusion rxn. The latter forces come from many sources and as stated earlier typically either supernovae or a large/dense enough clouds of particles which carry large qty's of gravity will spontaneously compress particles into a more orderly fashion. The latter rxn results in a net loss of energy as heat and radiation are also spontaneously generated.