Strong Thermodynamic Arrow Of The Expanding Universe example essay topic

The Second Law of Thermodynamics The Second Law of Thermodynamics has several variations. One version says that some heat is always wasted when converting heat into mechanical energy. In other words all heat can not be completely converted into mechanical energy. Another states that heat normally flows from high to low temperatures. So why do hot cups cool off, well the answer lies in the fact that the universe is expanding. Say the universe started off infinitely small and infinitely dense, then expanded at an exponential rate as fluctuations in density increased, eventually forming galaxies.

This explanation of the universe would explain the existence of the thermodynamic arrow of time. Because the universe is expanding, disorder is increasing. It can t be stopped. No one and nothing is powerful enough to break the laws of thermodynamics.

Albert Einstein once said, Thermodynamics is the only physical theory of general nature of which I am convinced that it will never be overthrown. If you want to know what's going on in the physical world, you simply have to look at the heat. To understand the forward flow of time, suppose that God decided that the universe should finish in a state of high order but that it didn t matter what state it started in. This would mean that disorder would increase with time.

One could observe a broken bottle gathering itself together on the floor and jumping back up onto the table. Such beings would have a psychological arrow of time that is backward. This means that I could take a warm Pepsi, set it on the counter and the colder particles in the room would become closer together and surround the bottle thus cooling the Pepsi. This makes the second law of thermodynamics questionable. Disorder increases with time because we measure time in th direction in which disorder increases. Why don t we see broken things gathering themselves together, or food being put back together after we have just eaten it Taking into consideration the two universal metaphysical beliefs concerning irreversibility and time, it is assumed that there must exist at least one physical process that is truly irreversible.

Once the process is found, it will either be responsible for the moving forward of time or it will lead us to the physical process which really is. What is a necessary condition to define irreversible, is that nature has to have such a preference for a final state that the reverse process becomes meaningless. Time moves forward and heat dissipates in the universe. The laws of science do not distinguish between the forward and backward directions of time, it is the arrows of time that distinguish the past from the future. The big bang theory of the universe says that the universe started off in a smooth and ordered state which began to expand or become disordered. The strong thermodynamic arrow of the expanding universe is necessary for the existence of intelligent beings.

For example, in order to live, people have to eat food, which is an ordered form of energy, and convert it into heat, which is a disordered form of energy. So it is tough to tell whether time is infinite or not. It all depends on the future of the universe. As long as the universe continues to expand, time will move forward. If the universe were to contract in the future time would run in reverse. After all of these thoughts, looking at the second law in terms of words like probability and tendency are becoming increasingly accepted.

To the common man those makes sense that there is a greater chance for the Pepsi to stay warm or the food to stay in my stomach but for those imaginative scientist, there are those slight probabilities that the reverse could happen. In conclusion, Thermodynamics although it has is skepticism and many interpreted meanings turns out to be one of the strongest discoveries to science known today. If things have the slight probabilities to go in reverse, although they have a tendency to go towards disorder, and move towards order then the universe would began to go back in time. This as we know it might be the end of human or for that matter life all together to stop. Reversed time can not support life. So when you see the glass be put back together and lifted onto the table next to you after you have just knocked it off, you know what is about to happen.