On 18 November 2014 18:06, Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 07, 2014 at 10:53:28PM -0500, John Clark wrote: > > On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 3:56 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > I'd say that expansion of the universe is almost necessary, not > > > contingent. > > > > > > > I'd say that by about 1850 when people started to have a understanding of > > what Entropy was physicists had all they needed to have known that the > > universe must have started out in a very very low entropy state, that is > to > > say they could have predicted the Big Bang in the early to mid 19th > > century; and they wouldn't have needed to go near a telescope to do so. > But > > unfortunately they didn't, it's one of the great failures of nerve or > > imagination in the history of science. > > > > Boltzmann indeed predicted a low entropy state sometime in the > past. His idea was that it was a massive thermal fluctuation, and that > the universe has existed for an eternity, and for most of that eternity > was at maximum entropy. > > It was kind of one of the first anthropic arguments. > > I don't think the big bang per se is such an obvious outcome from the > second law. > I've been arguing it's the other way around. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
