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Thus, if entropy is associated with disorder and if the entropy of the universe is headed towards maximal entropy, then many are often puzzled as to the nature of the "ordering" process and operation of evolution in relation to Clausius' most famous version of the second law, which states that the universe is headed towards maximal "disorder".
Energy supplied at a higher temperature (i.e. with low entropy) tends to be more useful than the same amount of energy available at a lower temperature. Mixing a hot parcel of a fluid with a cold one produces a parcel of intermediate temperature, in which the overall increase in entropy represents a "loss" that can never be replaced.
For a system in which gravity is important, such as the universe, this is a low-entropy state (compared to a high-entropy state of having all matter collapsed into black holes, a state to which the system may eventually evolve). As the Universe grows, its temperature drops, which leaves less energy [per unit volume of space] available to ...
Yet another approach is that the universe had high (or even maximal) entropy given its size, but as the universe grew it rapidly came out of thermodynamic equilibrium, its entropy only slightly increased compared to the increase in maximal possible entropy, and thus it has arrived at a very low entropy when compared to the much larger possible ...
The red curve at the left is the melting curve. The red dome represents the two-phase region with the low-entropy side the saturated liquid and the high-entropy side the saturated gas. The black curves give the TS relation along isobars. The pressures are indicated in bar. The blue curves are isenthalps (curves of constant enthalpy).
Thermodynamic entropy is measured as a change in entropy to a system containing a sub-system which undergoes heat transfer to its surroundings (inside the system of interest). It is based on the macroscopic relationship between heat flow into the sub-system and the temperature at which it occurs summed over the boundary of that sub-system.
Research concerning the relationship between the thermodynamic quantity entropy and both the origin and evolution of life began around the turn of the 20th century. In 1910 American historian Henry Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume A Letter to American Teachers of History proposing a theory of history based on the second law of ...
If the principle of indifference is applied without taking into account the past hypothesis, a low- or medium-entropy state would have likely evolved both from and toward higher-entropy macrostates, as there are more ways statistically to be high-entropy than low-entropy. The low- or medium-entropy state would have appeared as a "statistical ...