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| Black hole entropy equation |
I have been thinking about my recent conversations on mortality and longevity and my brain was wandering, as it often does in bed. I didn't get up and write down my thoughts as I had told myself to, so this is what I am left with the next day:
The notion of defeating entropy is
as possible as
suspending gravit
y
or cancelling fall and winter
for a never ending spring.
Bit pessimistic I know. Not going to win a Pulitzer either but it was three in the morning, after all, and sounded much more profound while I was in my pajamas. There is, of course, probably more, now forever lost to dreamland.
I may have filched the last idea from Bradbury, hope that Ray won't mind.
Are you familiar with the basic notion of entropy? The French mathematician Carnot introduced the concept, he wrote a paper in 1803 that proposed that in any natural process there exists an inherent tendency towards the dissipation of useful energy.
All closed systems eventually break down. Even organic beings. There are many reasons for the dissipation including friction and wear. The term entropy is used in various schools of science including economics, quantum mechanics, communications and cosmology.
Definition of entropy
1thermodynamics : a measure of the unavailable energy in a closed thermodynamic system that is also usually considered to be a measure of the system's disorder, that is a property of the system's state, and that varies directly with any reversible change in heat in the system and inversely with the temperature of the system.broadly : the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system
2a: the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformityEntropy is the general trend of the universe toward death and disorder.— James R. Newman
b: a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorderThe deterioration of copy editing and proof-reading, incidentally, is a token of the cultural entropy that has overtaken us in the postwar years.— John Simon
4statistical mechanics : a factor or quantity that is a function of the physical state of a mechanical system and is equal to the logarithm of the probability for the occurrence of the particular molecular arrangement in that state
As I said before, I seem to be in the clear minority on the whole death cheating business. Some of you have great plans for the infinite future, including new planet population and space nookie. I salute you comrades. I am content one day to submit to the natural long sleep. Throw me a cosmic rose on your way by.
And make your move before the Large Magellanic Cloud collides with the Milky Way Galaxy. I hear it is going to be one hell of a crash.
3 comments:
Too much death stuff lately. You will die exactly when God calls for it to happen, no sooner, no later.
Exist to take better and better photographs.
Enjoy the Gift of Life.
I respectfully disagree that there is too much death stuff lately. From my point of view it is not possible to comprehend what your situation is like although I do have some experience with death's head getting waved in my face. As this is an important thing that is going on for you it makes a natural topic for good writing.
I did notice that extreme pain or the threat of death don't come with fancy silver linings--it is hard reality and not much else. Fancy silver linings or grand insights can arise and be really helpful but I think they arise in defiance of a threatening situation.
I don't have enough brain power or a good enough hotline to god to know if the deity is directly involved in deciding when folks croak or if it is in the hands or a retarded clown who bumps people off when he gets bored with "self stimulating" himself. (vague allusion on purpose, after all there may be children present).
So keep on writing the topic is compelling if a bit crummy.
Thanks for the admonishment, I have been rather dark lately, for a variety of reasons that I don't need to go into now. I never really know what I am going to write about, usually get an itch in the early morning, never what people tell me to write about, by the way. I was sick for a while, beat up and my writing follows what I'm feeling. See where it all goes.
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