>CB: If the solar system is a closed system, does the second law of
>thermodynamics apply to the solar system ?
I understood that this was your question. Apparently my answer was not clear
enough. I'll elaborate. Note that I have no degree in the field and that I might be
wrong about this.
The actual law applies everywhere but is quite boring:
DSuniverse = DSsystem + DSsurroundings > 0
(D is delta, but I don't know how to do a delta in text mode)
It means that entropy in the universe can only increase. That's only useful for
cosmologists.
Now, if we have a system isolated from its surroundings well enough so that
interactions will be negligeable, we can say that entropy can only increase in that
system. That's interesting because we can then apply the 2nd law to many
systems. We can not do that with Earth's surface because of the Sun (I don't know
for Earth as a whole). We can do that for the solar system not because its
interactions with its surroundings are negligeable but because they are probably
decreasing entropy in its surroundings rather than the reverse. But this tells us
about the solar system *as a whole* and not about every system within it. So we
can say that the solar system will eventually cool and become inert but the
timescale for that evolution is so enormous that I said: So what?
In other words, while entropy can only increase for the solar system (well, under
current astronomical conditions), it can possibly decrease for the Earth because
the Earth recieves low-entropy energy from the Sun and is thus "transferring"
entropy to the Sun which can still "absorb" LOTS of it.
Hope that's not too obscure,
Julien
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