The bough branch sways in the wind, it's shakin'
And everybody learns
It's out of dust we were once taken
To dust we shall return.
It's naked I came from my mother's womb
It's naked I'll return some day
The Lord God gives this life to live
And man, he takes away.
In the Beginning
"
God created heaven and earth
"
But how?
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For some 13.5 billion years, matter in the cosmos has been organizing itself into ever more complex structures.
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It begins with a gas cloud, at its preliminary end there is (for a ridiculously short time) self-conscious, living tissue.
At least here and there.
And that inevitably in the entire universe at the same time, since the mechanism of this self-organization equally inevitably takes place in the entire universe at the same time.
Give or take a few billion earth years.
But:
- It is constantly claimed or asserted that the cosmos is a place of chaos.
- Or is descending into chaos.
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Nothing is further from the truth.
- A structure that begins as chaos cannot sink into chaos; it is already in that condition.
And a structure that actually sinks into chaos has order.
But from where?
On the contrary.
The entire development of the cosmos is an ongoing sequence of similar processes of order that create highly ordered, self-similar, almost fractal structures.
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Everything is in its place.
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Disturbances of order heal themselves.
But even in the smallest of its entities, in inorganic crystals, organic structures, DNA, molecules, atoms:
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Everywhere you will find the same, self-similar, high-grade order.
- So where is the chaos?
If we assume that the atoms and molecules are the basic building blocks of matter (nuclear physicists, please look away), then,
- from a cloud of one, single element - or a very few different ones - their quantity and complexity has increased hundredfold through nuclear fusion,
- their ashes then formed themselves into stellar spheres of inorganic molecules, which are almost endless in variation,
- some of which have then evolved into organic ones in the course of time, now with infinite variations,
- again some of which have entered into an independently sustained metabolism with their environment.
And who knows what's next.
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But through what agency did this occur?
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How did dead, unconscious matter heighten its own complexity?
- By its own gravity.
Gravity is the one and only force necessary to, out of chaos, shape the universe
Being a property of matter itself, this force is also unconditional, omnipresent and eternal.
Above the level of atoms, there is probably nothing in the universe that has not been created by it.
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Gravity not only formed all of the celestial bodies and their systems, from the dust cloud to the galaxies;
- but it continues to create these structures, in every passing second, and to maintain them;
- which, again, is one and the same: Creation is an ongoing process.
- One has only to think this force absent for a moment - and the entire cosmos would instantly dissolve into the cold chaos again.
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This parallel and serial process of creation, through the force of gravity, will continue as long as there is just one speck of dust - or rather, there are two.
And there is more:
By bringing the mass of the universe into motion (and keeping it in that state), gravity generated, and continues to generate all (thermodynamically effective!) forms of energy within it:
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Motion, heat, and light.
- Ex nihilo: Out of nothing.
And, as a result of this induced movement of the smallest particles towards one another, it created (and continues to create) the more complex elements and their chemical compounds - and ultimately life.
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Ex ipso: Out of itself ;-)
- And it goes beyond:
Even more abstract phenomena were, and are, only caused by the effect of gravity: right and left, inside and outside, (subjectively) above and below, before and after, something or nothing ... direction itself.
An interesting thought would be whether gravity has created the dimension of time itself by creating a directional movement, and thus a definable 'before' and 'after', but this is where it becomes esoteric.
However, it is known that gravity influences time and - even more important in this context - works over time, whether self-created or not.
Entropy and Thermodynamics
The self-organization and self-modification of matter ensues from the effect of its own gravity.
So far so good.
However, there is yet another dimension to the universe: thermodynamics.
Together, they form the Yin and Yang of physical existence; the Protagonist and Antagonist.
The thermodynamic processes
resulting from this creation of order and potential are determined by the laws of thermodynamics,
the theory of heat and motion, which were, more or less, first determined
and formulated about 150 years ago by the German physicist Rudolf Clausius.
Each of these thermodynamic processes reduces the very potential that made it possible; and, therefore, such a process can neither sustain itself nor arise out of itself, nor can it generate such a potential that makes it possible.
Ergo:
Perpetuum mobile non datur.
Clausius, to describe the reduction of potential, introduced the concept of entropy, measured in energy per temperature unit (Joule/Kelvin).
And this is where it becomes tricky; and somewhat inconsistent.
Not in reality - which would be impossible - but in the theoretical representation of it.-
For, as a secondary effect, and through the very potential it creates, the force of gravity calls all those thermodynamic processes into being, which subsequently break this potential down again.
- In other words, life (and not just life) breaks down what gravity builds up.
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Life is thermodynamic and therefore destructive.
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All the primary, secondary and tertiary potentials that are self-reinforcingly generated by gravity strive to be diminished again by self-diminishing thermodynamics.
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These gravitationally generated potentials are an expression of reduced entropy, or negentropy; vulgo, gravitationally augmented order.
(Of course, there can be no such thing as truly negative entropy, as neither energy content nor temperature can be negative; their individual minimum is zero. And, as is gravity, entropy, too, seems to be bound to matter; not as a property of individual particles, but of their collection. Empty space, i. e. 'nothing' probably cannot possess entropy above zero.) -
We live by ingesting this order or negentropy with our food - Erwin Schrödinger.
(Incidentally, also with the oxygen of the air we breathe, which itself has been separated from hydrogen and carbon by solar radiation, which, in turn, is generated by gravity.)
Chaos and Creation
The structure of the cosmos
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The Sun, Moon and the Earth were all created - and are maintained - by gravity.
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The Earth (directly) and Sun (indirectly) still exude the energy generated by this process.
- And the presence of the moon also moves formidable masses by it.
Generally, most processes in the cosmos are a mixture of primary (gravitational) and secondary (thermodynamic) components.
For example, water
- which is primarily created by gravity (i.e. its oxygen component),
- secondarily by thermodynamics (combining this oxygen with the hydrogen to H2O),
- which is then gravitationally collected and heated by the Sun and Earth,
- rises thermodynamically against the force of gravity (!) of the planet into its atmosphere,
- releasing this heat into the gravitationally generated emptiness of space,
- and then falls back to earth under the force of gravity,
- where it in turn unfolds thermodynamic effects by grinding down mountains and driving turbines.
And, in a cleansed state, makes itself available again to the living beings that previously excreted it.
It is in this cycle that, what we may call "Our Daily Bread", is being steadily created; a vital, constant influx of order; or from a physical point of view: of negentropy.
It cannot be capitalized upon, at least not directly; and should it, on a macro scale, stop for one instant, this world would immediately be returned to dust from whence it came - to, once more, take billions of years to be re-formed.
Gravity creates this order through separation and concentration - it separates the land from the waters, the heavens from the earth, the something from the nothing; and it ensures that this order of things is promoted, maintained, and if disturbed, restored.
The entropy of the universe
One of the many interpretations of "entropy" states:
The lower the entropy, the higher the order - of a system or an object, that is here the question; and, also, when does a closed system become an object?
For example: The universe itself?
Can you estimate or calculate the entropy of the universe?
Does entropy even have a maximum value?
In addition, it is asserted that, viewed thermodynamically, the entropy, i. e. the overall disorder, the statistical distribution should only be able to increase, never decrease; and that this should apply to every process.
If every process is regarded as thermodynamic in this way, then, at the beginning of all time - 13.5 billion earth years ago according to today's knowledge - the entropy of the universe necessarily was lower, i. e. its entire order higher than today.
What, then, was the structure of the universe like, before, as is assumed, it thermodynamically disintegrated into the current accumulation of galaxy clusters?
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A system in the state of highest disorder, of highest entropy, cannot increase its entropy or disorder further over time.
- And a system of lesser disorder, i. e. of lower entropy, according to this definition, must somehow have arrived at this state below the theoretical maximum:
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either it has remained, from the beginning, at this lower level of disorder (preservation),
- or there was involved a process of decreasing disorder (creation);
- or a previously existing level of lesser disorder has increased (decay).
In other words:
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Either a system remains on its level of disorder,
- Or it is forced to increase its level of disorder over time, according to the laws of thermodynamics,
- Or there must exist a physical process that reduces entropy over time, make the statistical distribution more unequal.
For example, Gravity.
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That was the description of how today's world may have been created.
The story of Genesis, in principle, was not wrong:
Order ensues through separation.
Without this order, life is not possible - almost nothing would exist without it.
- With the discovery of thermodynamics, the question of its presuppositions has somehow wandered out of focus.
- Rather, the focus has been on the description of the inevitable disorder it creates.
- And not on the fact that, in order to do this, it has to break down a previously existing order.
And this blindness may well have been caused by the fact that we may have been inadvertently calculating with the reciprocal value of entropy for the last 150 years.
If we are habitually calculating with the actual reciprocal value of entropy, then that is not a simple mistake:
It works, but it is still wrong.
The Error of Sisyphus
What is the difference between Columbus and Sisyphus?
Sisyphus never changed his path; he endlessly and ineffectually kept trying to solve the problem, or to avoid its solution, via the same route.
Every time.
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However, to succeed, one has to find the hidden pass |
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