On 20 March 2014 12:21, <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Wednesday, March 19, 2014 10:35:11 PM UTC, Liz R wrote: > >> On 19 March 2014 15:55, Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> So an expanding universe should give rise to increasing maximum >>> entropy, but the total energy remains constant (at zero). As for what >>> happens to the free energy (stuff available for work), its a bit more >>> complicated, but it appears that processes reducing the free energy >>> (or increasing the entropy, as its the same thing) are not currently >>> keeping up with the increase in maximum entropy caused by an expanding >>> universe. >>> >>> This is the bottom line, in a nutshell. As long as the entropy ceiling >> goes on rising, the energy available to do work decreases, I think >> asymptotially, but is never reduced to zero. (Hence we might still have >> conscious beings made from electron-positron "atoms" larger than the >> current Hubble radius in the year 1 googol... perhaps) I'm not sure what >> happens when the available energy reaches the zero point level, though? >> > > Scaling up this way doesn't scope up the remaining free enwefy in a > useful way, It's Work done or being done. If each unit of free energy is a > googol/15-Bill light years away from something it could be potentially do > work on, chances are nothing ever happens again > > Yes, I think that's what Carl Sagan said about the possibility of life existing indefinitely, too. The entropy ceiling goes up indefinitely, but the energy remaining goes down, and ultimately I would imagine it ends up at the noise level. Since entropy is an emergent concept I'm not sure where the rising ceiling gets us in the long run, although it certainly helps in the "short" term (the big bang was near equilibrium, yet we're now far from it).
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