A galactic cloud of gas contains less entropy than a planet. An object higher up a gravitational well has less entropy than one lower in it. Presuming the law of entropy is reversed, it would be impossible for an object to fall—that would be a violation of the reversed law of entropy. It would be capable, absent a decrease in entropy somewhere else to compensate (“work”), only of rising, if that only by random drift. Thus, rivers would flow uphill, and planets would slowly disintegrate. What’s to contend?
Entropy -isn’t- directly measured. It doesn’t even exist as an inherent property of isolated matter; it exists only as a relative property when comparing two points in a system. I didn’t get into degrees of freedom, but they figure into this; if we discover a new inherent property of matter that can be exploited for work, all previous entropic values go out the window. This also isn’t contentious. Entropy is a product of calculation based on degrees of freedom.
Microstates and macrostates are used in their conventional thermodynamic sense; we’re on the internet, a Google query will provide these definitions. Forces are used in their conventional physics sense.
Information is a messy one. I’ll consider that one, but I consider it here only to address a particular misapprehension about entropy, so I’m not sure if that’s important, since the context of that misapprehension means anybody possessed of it already knows what I’m talking about.
A galactic cloud of gas contains less entropy than a planet. An object higher up a gravitational well has less entropy than one lower in it. Presuming the law of entropy is reversed, it would be impossible for an object to fall—that would be a violation of the reversed law of entropy. It would be capable, absent a decrease in entropy somewhere else to compensate (“work”), only of rising, if that only by random drift. Thus, rivers would flow uphill, and planets would slowly disintegrate. What’s to contend?
Entropy -isn’t- directly measured. It doesn’t even exist as an inherent property of isolated matter; it exists only as a relative property when comparing two points in a system. I didn’t get into degrees of freedom, but they figure into this; if we discover a new inherent property of matter that can be exploited for work, all previous entropic values go out the window. This also isn’t contentious. Entropy is a product of calculation based on degrees of freedom.
Microstates and macrostates are used in their conventional thermodynamic sense; we’re on the internet, a Google query will provide these definitions. Forces are used in their conventional physics sense.
Information is a messy one. I’ll consider that one, but I consider it here only to address a particular misapprehension about entropy, so I’m not sure if that’s important, since the context of that misapprehension means anybody possessed of it already knows what I’m talking about.