Saturday, August 27, 2022

It's all about flow ...

 

Hubble image of NGC 1566, taken 2nd June 2014 by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Parker and Jeynes demonstrate that the stability of spiral galaxies is a consequence of their stable (Maximum Entropy) geometry. Parker & Jeynes (dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-46765-w; 2019, see Fig. 2).

Being a designer and artist, the fascination with geometry, especially when connected to physics, never disappoints as nature repeats itself endlessly with emphasis on avoiding gradients and following the path of least resistance, something able to be seen when combining geometry with math to explain how a given process functions, in this case, entropy, the 2nd law of Thermodynamics.

To whit ... The second law may be formulated by the observation that the entropy of isolated systems left to spontaneous evolution cannot decrease, as they always arrive at a state of thermodynamic equilibrium where the entropy is highest at the given internal energy.[4] An increase in the combined entropy of system and surroundings accounts for the irreversibility of natural processes, often referred to in the concept of the arrow of time.[5]

Thermodynamics seems to have been difficult to reconcile with an increase in entropy.

Artist: C.Evans-Pughe/howandwhy.com

 Quantum Mechanics yields a pure measurement, but it’s the thermodynamics that explains it. 

Physicists have long struggled to explain how the inevitable increase in the universe’s entropy can be reconciled with the reversible laws of quantum mechanics. Now, Professor Chris Jeynes at the University of Surrey Ion Beam Centre, UK, believes he has found a solution in geometry. This new geometrical thermodynamics shows how the stability in time of structures as diverse as atomic nuclei, the DNA helix, and spiral galaxies can be explained as a natural result of systems adopting their maximum possible entropy configuration, even as the universe evolves over time.

In essence, degrees of freedom expressed by virtually everything in existence are limited.

de·gree of free·dom
/dəˈɡrē,dēˈɡrē əv,ə ˈfrēdəm/
noun
plural noundegrees of freedom
  1. each of a number of independently variable factors affecting the range of states in which a system may exist, in particular any of the directions in which independent motion can occur.
    • CHEMISTRY
      each of a number of independent factors required to specify a system at equilibrium.
    • STATISTICS
      the number of independent values or quantities which can be assigned to a statistical distribution.

Organization needs a flow of entropy

The second law is strongly related to order – and disorder. Living beings are low-entropy systems and depend on a flow of entropy simply to stay alive. As Jeynes explains, ‘in the context of life on Earth, the Sun is a source of entropy, and the dark night sky is a sink of entropy’. Parker and Jeynes have shown that entropy production is a conserved physical quantity, just as energy is also a conserved physical quantity. Notably, although entropy production necessarily involves dissipation processes, it is still subject to its own conservation law. This is rather shocking for physicists.

According to Professor Chris Jeynes, entropy and energy act as two sides of the same coin operating in concert with quantum, chaos and relativity whereby entropy's time's arrow still holds without violating the tenets of quantum, chaos and relativity. How cool is that? :)

1 - 1.6.18 0r 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21.34 etc, etc ... AKA The Golden Mean or the Fibonacci Number 




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