There are a few postulates I would like to discuss here. They may or may not be true since that's the point of this post.
Background
Firstly, from the second law of thermodynamics it is said that entropy of the universe must always increase with time. Any conversion of energy from one form to another will always result in an increased disarray since typically one form of energy is converted into many other form such as electrical energy being converted to heat, light, kinetic etc.
Taking into consideration that entropy is the disarray of anything, let us now consider the mass-energy equivalence e = mc^2. A small amount of mass can produce unimaginably high amounts of energy. Where e is energy measured in joules, kg*(m/s^2), m in kg, c in m/s. For one kg of mass, it's energy equivalent is 1kg x 300,000,000m/s x 300,000,000m/s = 9x10^16joules. One ton of TNT in comparison yields 4.184 x 10^9 joules of explosive energy. From the entropic perspective, we can say that the TNT pre-detonation is in a lower form of entropy than post-detonation, since it is clearly in more disarray than being stored in its chemical form. That said, the increase in entropy is caused by chemical reactions, an exothermic one in this case as such:
2 C7H5N3O6 (TNT) → 3 N2 + 5 H2O + 7 CO + 7 C
2 C7H5N3O6 → 3 N2 + 5 H2 + 12 CO + 2 C
While there is no actual conversion of mass to energy, but more of releasing the binding energy, the idea here is that explosions will increase entropy, leading us to the next consideration - nuclear reactions.
What happens when a uranium atom is split (fission) is that it releases a huge amount of nuclear binding energy, known as the strong force, although it's considerably lesser than the energy produced by fusion. We can learn that large particles do not like each other due to the electrostatic repulsive forces generated by protons, this follows the phenomena described as 'iron peak', or as quoted by wikipedia
'For elements lighter than iron on the periodic table, nuclear fusion releases energy while fission consumes it. For iron, and for all of the heavier elements, nuclear fusion consumes energy, but nuclear fission releases it.'
From this, we can say that any reactions described above would increase entropy since everything that happen does. Therefore, when binding energy, or the strong force, is broken, tremendous amount of energy is released and thus entropy also increases. In this case, the binding energy for the uranium is released as high energy gamma rays.
Another way of looking at these gamma rays would be to simply consider energy in their state of electromagnetic waves flowing around the universe. This would be the highest form of entropy to exist, since it is in the highest form of disarray. If these energy would to be in the form of mass, such as a litre of water, it would be in a state of relatively low entropy (remember the above how much 1kg of mass is equals to in energy).If a process exists whereby that amount of energy in electromagnetic radiation, 9x10^16 joules to be exact, to be converted into a litre of water that doesn't require an energy input or entropy release higher than that amount, can we say that entropy actually decreases?
Quantum chromodynamics binding energy (QCBE)
This is the phenomena describing how mass exist. Basically, elementary particles such as gluons binds together to form a baryons (these are protons, atoms, etc.). Gluons are massless particle which, due to QCBE, creates mass in a proton due to the energy they possess and its interaction with the higgs field. This phenomena explains the creation of mass from energy and links the mass-energy equivalence. 99% of the mass in the proton are actually QCBE interacting with the higgs field. That is to say, should the binding energy of the gluons were to be broken, the entire mass of a proton would be lost, converted into massless energy. This does not happen in reality however, as gluons really love to bind with each other as they do not have any repulsive force between them. In fact, gluons love to be in proximity of each other so much that should a proton be given so much energy such that it exceeds the QCBE, another pair of gluons will actually be produced instead of the QCBE breaking, converting the energy input into the system to mass. This is one theory of 'absolute limit of hot' that scientists are still researching into.
Through these discussion I think we have established fairly clearly that mass would appear to be a less entropic form of energy. Here comes the interesting part.
Pair production
This is a phenomena describing electromagnetic waves randomly forming mass, creating a particle and a antiparticle. Such as a proton & antiproton or an electron & position. This happens when energy somehow gets concentrated in an area whereby in that certain space, the energy waves combined energy exceeds the rest mass of the produced pair. A proton's rest mass is 938.28MeV, so should a system whereby energy waves intersect such that it exceeds this amount (x2), a proton and antiproton can be formed out of this energy. Consider the following system.
The first box describes a vacuum, whereby the energy exists in the lowest quantum state. If you didn't already know, there is no true vacuum where nothing exist. The 'truest' vacuum is just a system whereby the energy in it is described as being the least energetic. True 'nothingness' doesn't exist; just quantum vacuum state. These energy sometimes come together due to the brownian motion of randomness, since it's a stochastic process, the probability of this happening is low, but it is probable.
When said waves comes together such that the interference effect increases the wave's energy past the particle's rest mass, as shown in the second box, particles are created. However, they will annihilate each other almost immediately in order to not violate the second law of thermodynamics, well the formation of mass in the first place would already violate it, but the annihilation serves as a correcting process more or less.
Hawking radiation
Well here's the interesting follow up. Should a pair particle be created on the event horizon of a black hole, they don't actually annihilate, because one of the particle will actually fall into the black hole while the other escapes into the universe. This phenomena is described as hawking radiation since gamma particles are observed to be shot out of black holes and also describes the evaporation of black holes. This is theorized that antiparticles falling into the black hole annihilates the mass in the black hole, turning into energy, these energy are typically released as gamma ray bursts.
What is of importance here is the free particle that radiates outside the event horizon of the black hole. In cases such as pair production of an electron and positron, the mass are still rather negligible since an electron or positron has zero invariant mass. However, considering that electrons do have mass of 9.11×10−31kgs, equivalent to 0.511MeV, electromagnetic radiation described above exceeding this threshold (x2) have a possibility of forming an electron-positron pair, but since protons have a much higher mass, we should focus more on that instead.
Given that a proton-antiproton pair forms at the event horizon of a black hole, and that the antiproton falls into the black hole, the single proton would appear to be ejected out of the black hole as radiation. When it comes into contact with electrons which as discussed are more likely to be formed, an atom of hydrogen is produced. This is the lightest known element.
Hydrogen is produced from nothing.
Cycle of solar systems
These hydrogen would lose energy as it courses throughout space and would eventually be bounded to the gravitational field of a star. As multiple hydrogen accumulates, the body of hydrogen's mass increases and starts to attract more and more hydrogens or even heavier elements such as helium.
As these growing bodies accumulate mass large enough to the point whereby at its core, the pressure is so immense that it manages to overcome the individual atom's electrostatic repulsive forces to form nuclear reactions (fusion), we would call that a star. Heavier elements up till iron are then formed this way called stellar nucleosynthesis. Recapping the above, Iron is now produced from nothing.
As nuclear fusion in the core continues, it generates an outward pressure to prevent the planet from caving into itself. However, once the planet runs out of lighter elements to fuse, there is no longer any outward pressure and the massive gravitational pull would cause the entire planet to collapse inwards, compressing whatever is in the core to a singularity, forming a black hole. The surrounding lighter elements are then released in a explosion called the supernova. Different elements such as silicon and nickel are formed in this process known as supernovae nucleosynthesis. Heavier elements are subsequently formed by neutron capture.
From what we discussed, everything we see in existence now did come from apparently nothing.
Conclusion..?
Perhaps the fact that everything we do or observe increases entropy that is simply the universe returning to whence it come from. It is a continuous process of black holes forming solar systems, it collapsing into another black hole, and so on. Maybe we aren't meant to reduce entropy since the laws of the universe are doing it for us, and that any entropy we can generate is absolutely negligible and insignificant compared to the mechanisms of black holes as the universe's clean up.
Background
Firstly, from the second law of thermodynamics it is said that entropy of the universe must always increase with time. Any conversion of energy from one form to another will always result in an increased disarray since typically one form of energy is converted into many other form such as electrical energy being converted to heat, light, kinetic etc.
Taking into consideration that entropy is the disarray of anything, let us now consider the mass-energy equivalence e = mc^2. A small amount of mass can produce unimaginably high amounts of energy. Where e is energy measured in joules, kg*(m/s^2), m in kg, c in m/s. For one kg of mass, it's energy equivalent is 1kg x 300,000,000m/s x 300,000,000m/s = 9x10^16joules. One ton of TNT in comparison yields 4.184 x 10^9 joules of explosive energy. From the entropic perspective, we can say that the TNT pre-detonation is in a lower form of entropy than post-detonation, since it is clearly in more disarray than being stored in its chemical form. That said, the increase in entropy is caused by chemical reactions, an exothermic one in this case as such:
2 C7H5N3O6 (TNT) → 3 N2 + 5 H2O + 7 CO + 7 C
2 C7H5N3O6 → 3 N2 + 5 H2 + 12 CO + 2 C
While there is no actual conversion of mass to energy, but more of releasing the binding energy, the idea here is that explosions will increase entropy, leading us to the next consideration - nuclear reactions.
What happens when a uranium atom is split (fission) is that it releases a huge amount of nuclear binding energy, known as the strong force, although it's considerably lesser than the energy produced by fusion. We can learn that large particles do not like each other due to the electrostatic repulsive forces generated by protons, this follows the phenomena described as 'iron peak', or as quoted by wikipedia
'For elements lighter than iron on the periodic table, nuclear fusion releases energy while fission consumes it. For iron, and for all of the heavier elements, nuclear fusion consumes energy, but nuclear fission releases it.'
From this, we can say that any reactions described above would increase entropy since everything that happen does. Therefore, when binding energy, or the strong force, is broken, tremendous amount of energy is released and thus entropy also increases. In this case, the binding energy for the uranium is released as high energy gamma rays.
Another way of looking at these gamma rays would be to simply consider energy in their state of electromagnetic waves flowing around the universe. This would be the highest form of entropy to exist, since it is in the highest form of disarray. If these energy would to be in the form of mass, such as a litre of water, it would be in a state of relatively low entropy (remember the above how much 1kg of mass is equals to in energy).If a process exists whereby that amount of energy in electromagnetic radiation, 9x10^16 joules to be exact, to be converted into a litre of water that doesn't require an energy input or entropy release higher than that amount, can we say that entropy actually decreases?
Quantum chromodynamics binding energy (QCBE)
This is the phenomena describing how mass exist. Basically, elementary particles such as gluons binds together to form a baryons (these are protons, atoms, etc.). Gluons are massless particle which, due to QCBE, creates mass in a proton due to the energy they possess and its interaction with the higgs field. This phenomena explains the creation of mass from energy and links the mass-energy equivalence. 99% of the mass in the proton are actually QCBE interacting with the higgs field. That is to say, should the binding energy of the gluons were to be broken, the entire mass of a proton would be lost, converted into massless energy. This does not happen in reality however, as gluons really love to bind with each other as they do not have any repulsive force between them. In fact, gluons love to be in proximity of each other so much that should a proton be given so much energy such that it exceeds the QCBE, another pair of gluons will actually be produced instead of the QCBE breaking, converting the energy input into the system to mass. This is one theory of 'absolute limit of hot' that scientists are still researching into.
Through these discussion I think we have established fairly clearly that mass would appear to be a less entropic form of energy. Here comes the interesting part.
Pair production
This is a phenomena describing electromagnetic waves randomly forming mass, creating a particle and a antiparticle. Such as a proton & antiproton or an electron & position. This happens when energy somehow gets concentrated in an area whereby in that certain space, the energy waves combined energy exceeds the rest mass of the produced pair. A proton's rest mass is 938.28MeV, so should a system whereby energy waves intersect such that it exceeds this amount (x2), a proton and antiproton can be formed out of this energy. Consider the following system.
The first box describes a vacuum, whereby the energy exists in the lowest quantum state. If you didn't already know, there is no true vacuum where nothing exist. The 'truest' vacuum is just a system whereby the energy in it is described as being the least energetic. True 'nothingness' doesn't exist; just quantum vacuum state. These energy sometimes come together due to the brownian motion of randomness, since it's a stochastic process, the probability of this happening is low, but it is probable.
When said waves comes together such that the interference effect increases the wave's energy past the particle's rest mass, as shown in the second box, particles are created. However, they will annihilate each other almost immediately in order to not violate the second law of thermodynamics, well the formation of mass in the first place would already violate it, but the annihilation serves as a correcting process more or less.
Hawking radiation
Well here's the interesting follow up. Should a pair particle be created on the event horizon of a black hole, they don't actually annihilate, because one of the particle will actually fall into the black hole while the other escapes into the universe. This phenomena is described as hawking radiation since gamma particles are observed to be shot out of black holes and also describes the evaporation of black holes. This is theorized that antiparticles falling into the black hole annihilates the mass in the black hole, turning into energy, these energy are typically released as gamma ray bursts.
What is of importance here is the free particle that radiates outside the event horizon of the black hole. In cases such as pair production of an electron and positron, the mass are still rather negligible since an electron or positron has zero invariant mass. However, considering that electrons do have mass of 9.11×10−31kgs, equivalent to 0.511MeV, electromagnetic radiation described above exceeding this threshold (x2) have a possibility of forming an electron-positron pair, but since protons have a much higher mass, we should focus more on that instead.
Given that a proton-antiproton pair forms at the event horizon of a black hole, and that the antiproton falls into the black hole, the single proton would appear to be ejected out of the black hole as radiation. When it comes into contact with electrons which as discussed are more likely to be formed, an atom of hydrogen is produced. This is the lightest known element.
Hydrogen is produced from nothing.
Cycle of solar systems
These hydrogen would lose energy as it courses throughout space and would eventually be bounded to the gravitational field of a star. As multiple hydrogen accumulates, the body of hydrogen's mass increases and starts to attract more and more hydrogens or even heavier elements such as helium.
As these growing bodies accumulate mass large enough to the point whereby at its core, the pressure is so immense that it manages to overcome the individual atom's electrostatic repulsive forces to form nuclear reactions (fusion), we would call that a star. Heavier elements up till iron are then formed this way called stellar nucleosynthesis. Recapping the above, Iron is now produced from nothing.
As nuclear fusion in the core continues, it generates an outward pressure to prevent the planet from caving into itself. However, once the planet runs out of lighter elements to fuse, there is no longer any outward pressure and the massive gravitational pull would cause the entire planet to collapse inwards, compressing whatever is in the core to a singularity, forming a black hole. The surrounding lighter elements are then released in a explosion called the supernova. Different elements such as silicon and nickel are formed in this process known as supernovae nucleosynthesis. Heavier elements are subsequently formed by neutron capture.
From what we discussed, everything we see in existence now did come from apparently nothing.
Conclusion..?
Perhaps the fact that everything we do or observe increases entropy that is simply the universe returning to whence it come from. It is a continuous process of black holes forming solar systems, it collapsing into another black hole, and so on. Maybe we aren't meant to reduce entropy since the laws of the universe are doing it for us, and that any entropy we can generate is absolutely negligible and insignificant compared to the mechanisms of black holes as the universe's clean up.
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