By John Karoly
Chicago, IL, USA
The Laws of Thermodynamics collectively are
among the fundamental laws of our Universe. They may not apply in other
universes, if there are other universes, but they apply everywhere in ours. The
First Law of Thermodynamics deals with energy. It states that energy cannot be
created or destroyed; the total quantity of energy in the Universe stays the
same.
The Second Law states that as energy is
transformed or transferred, more and more of it is wasted. The measure of this
wasted energy is called entropy. The Second Law
states that each of these processes
results in an increase of entropy. At the “moment” of the Big Bang, the entropy
of the Universe was zero. At the end of the Universe’s existence, the entropy
of the Universe will be infinite.
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| John Karoly |
Entropy is a measure of the internal chaos or
disorder of any closed system, whether very small or as large as our Universe. And
if you take our world as a closed system defined by every country on Earth, the
chaos and disorder today is increasing relentlessly beyond the ordinary, at
least so it seems. Thus the entropy increases well above the value it would
have without this chaos.
Just observe, almost weekly a new war breaks out
in the Middle East. No one knows anymore who is fighting whom and for what
reason or who is aligned with whom, for how long or how soon will the alliance change.
And this game goes on and on with endless variations. If the disturbance could
be measured, it would no doubt add to the entropy of the Middle East. Entropy can
only have a positive value; it cannot ever go negative. A disordered, chaotic
state can never become spontaneously ordered again, “you cannot unscramble an
egg.”
Beyond the Middle East, we have Kim Jong-un in
North Korea, the man vying for the title of Number One Lunatic in the World,
firing a series of world-peace threatening missiles weekly into the Sea of
Japan at no small cost to entropy. He presents an enormous danger to mankind. A
World War fought with nuclear weapons is not a distant fear with a crazy man in
power who commands plenty of nuclear weapons!
And then there is the ever-present KGB agent, an
unpunished murderer, the current and future head of Russia, who wants to
re-establish the former glory of the Soviet Union, minimally, or, even better,
Czarism with himself, the great Putin, crowned as the Czar of Russia. Putin is
on friendly terms with nuclear weapons; he said that he does not mind to use
them, damn the consequences.
If you blow up enough nuclear bombs, we will not
likely need to be concerned about Global Warming. The price, however, is steep
and the entropy balance will shift dramatically toward its maximum.
We too have our own lunatic, our current
President. As far as a “personality cult” is concerned, he is up there with the
worst dictators of the twentieth century. No one knows, what he is going to do
in any given situation or instant. His unpredictability could be very dangerous
in times of great stress. He is the nominal head of a party that was unwilling
or incapable of doing anything about nominating and electing him. A mentally
unstable person, an extreme narcissist, now heads the most powerful country on
the planet at a time when worldwide dangers require outstanding leadership. He
can contribute plenty to world entropy!
With these three, Kim Jong-un, Putin and Trump,
the world is in a dangerous state. The degree of disorder is as high as one can
imagine. The two World Wars fought in the last century were basically European
wars. The next one will likely be a true World War fought by and for a lot of
sick men equipped with nuclear weapons.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics defines the
direction of time with its ultimate prediction of when time will cease and how
the Universe will come to an end, albeit so far in the future that it has no
practical significance to us. This Law nevertheless could be disturbing in
times like these. People at the time of its publication, following the
discovery of the Second Law, were fearful and talked about an “entropy
catastrophe” besetting mankind. In later times, this fear was dismissed as
nonsense.
But we cannot reverse entropy. If we could, we
could unscramble the egg, Humpty Dumpty would not be so unhappy and we could
possibly live in a world free of dictators. We would be getting younger, because
time would flow in reverse and we could remember the future.
It is time the leaders on our planet wake up and
mind the Second Law before their nuclear weapons destroy us and, we have news
for them, they are included as victims in the destruction.