From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Jul 20 2002 - 05:40:16 MDT
On Sat, Jul 20, 2002 at 09:33:09AM +0200, scerir wrote:
>
> Actually the common formulations of the second law
> of thermodynamics (the entropy of a closed system
> never decreases; the entropy of a closed system
> in equilibrium always takes the maximum possible
> value) are in contradiction to the fact that the entropy
> of a system obeying the Schroedinger equation
> (with a time independent Hamiltonian) always remains
> constant. (!)
Well, if you can only measure a few macroscopic quantities of the system
and there are many more hidden quantities, then entropy will seem to
increase over time from an ordered initial state. The order is still
there, but gets more evenly distributed among all the quantities so that
eventually it won't be visible. In time recurrence might occur, but the
recurrence time of macroscopic systems is likely so long that it is
practically "never".
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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