RE: [Fis] Information and communication

From: Stanley N. Salthe <[email protected]>
Date: Thu 03 Jun 2004 - 10:29:15 CEST

Pedro said:

>Maybe the question by Michel on entropy and relativity can be answered
>along the following lines (from Atkins, 2002, p. 134). "... A remarkable
>fact emerges when we start to think about the structure of spacetime in
>terms of entropy. In 1995, Ted Jacobson (http://xxx.lanl.gov and the
>subdirectory gr-qc) showed that if we combine the Clausius expression for
>the change of entropy when heat enters a region with an assertion about the
>relation of entropy to the area of the surface bounding the region (in
>fact, the two are proportional, as they are known to be for the surface
>surrounding a black hole), then the local structure of spacetime is
>distorted in exactly the way predicted by Einstein's equations for general
>relativity. In other words, in a rather refined sense, the Second Law
>implies the existence of Einstein's equations of general relativity! So,
>maybe the steam engine is not just inside us, it is everywhere..."

If I may fantasize about this relationship a bit: Einstein sees no
difference between gravitation and acceleration. We know now that
Universal expansion in the Big Bang is accelerating. As pointed out by
Layzer, and also Frautschi, the acceleration has been so fast that the
Universe has not been able to equilibrate internally. The result was
progressively: decoherence -> strong forces -> gravitation -> organization.
That is to say, here acceleration is the parent of gravitation. In "equal
and opposite" spirit, the Second Law was simultaneously instituted in the
drive of the Universe to equilibrate (we can surmise that the Universe is
an isolated system because otherwise it could not expand in accelerated
fashion, and, of course, we know that al energy gradients are labile). The
strength of the Second Law should therefore be scaled to the force of
gravitation. So, in the notion that the area of the surface of a region is
proportional to its entropy, in the Universal nonequilibrium case, that
entropy would have to be the maximum possible entropy, not the actually
achieved amount. If that is so, then the distortion of spacetime now is
not what it would be calculated to be at equilibrium. In any case, I would
say that the Second Law implies the existence of gravitation, while this
implies the existence of Universal acceleration.

STAN

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Received on Thu Jun 3 09:59:11 2004

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