________________________________ From: Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> To: Eugene Salamin <gene_salamin@yahoo.com>; math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Sunday, July 28, 2013 3:32 PM Subject: Re: [math-fun] quantum theory foundational issues, my theory of how they should be resolved
I don't agree.
There's no fundamental reason that both emitting stars and absorbing stars (i.e., normal stars in the negative direction of time) could not exist in the same spatial universe, according to the laws of physics.
Then the radiation that ultimately gets absorbed onto the stars would have to start out precisely focussed.
We live in a neighborhood of the universe where as far as we know there are only emitting stars. (Of course we do, or we couldn't have evolved.) But the spatial universe could be hugely larger than we know or even infinite.
According to the inflationary theory of cosmology, that is completely correct. The entire universe is immensely bigger than the visible universe.
I don't see expansion of the universe "allowing" entropy to increase but rather going hand-in-hand with it. As far as I know, our portion of the universe might be expanding while other portions of the universe might be contracting.
But entropy is increasing in both portions.
I don't really believe in the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics anyway for large or high-entropy initial conditions. (E.g., although the universe near us is expanding, galaxies and stars are being formed at the same time.)
Then, can you design an engine that provides useful power using ambient heat (at a single temperature) as its energy source?
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So let me bring up a related subject, as long as we're discussing physics. There are two striking aspects of the universe that are so difficult to address that physics can't touch them (so far): a) the flow of time, and b) conscious awareness. These two things must be very closely related. But very mysterious.
--Dan
Brent wrote: ----- The direction of physical time is determined by expansion of the universe (which allows entropy to increase) - which in a sense is a gravitational effect. -----