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Showing posts with label entropy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label entropy. Show all posts

2010-03-28

Is gravity a phenomenon that emerges from the laws of thermodynamics and information theory?

From Technology Review:

A few month's ago, Erik Verlinde at the the University of Amsterdam put forward one such idea which has taken the world of physics by storm. Verlinde suggested that gravity is merely a manifestation of entropy in the Universe. His idea is based on the second law of thermodynamics, that entropy always increases over time. It suggests that differences in entropy between parts of the Universe generates a force that redistributes matter in a way that maximises entropy. This is the force we call gravity.
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2009-12-09

Entropy alone creates complex crystals from simple shapes, study shows

From PhysOrg.com:

In a study that elevates the role of entropy in creating order, research led by the University of Michigan shows that certain pyramid shapes can spontaneously organize into complex quasicrystals.
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2009-09-10

How to Measure What We Don't Know

From PhysOrg.com:

How do we discover new things? For scientists, observation and measurement are the main ways to extract information from Nature. Based on observations, scientists build models that, in turn, are used to make predictions about the future or the past. To the extent that the predictions are successful, scientists conclude that their models capture Nature’s organization. However, Nature does not reveal secrets easily - there is no way for observers to learn everything about a process, so some information always remains hidden from view; other kinds of information are present, but difficult to extract. In a recent study, researchers have investigated how to measure the degree of hidden information in a process (its “crypticity”) and, along the way, solved several puzzles involved in extracting, storing, and communicating information.
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2009-08-27

Physicist Proposes Solution to Arrow-of-Time Paradox

From PhysOrg.com:

Entropy can decrease, according to a new proposal - but the process would destroy any evidence of its existence, and erase any memory an observer might have of it. It sounds like the plot to a weird sci-fi movie, but the idea has recently been suggested by theoretical physicist Lorenzo Maccone, currently a visiting scientist at MIT, in an attempt to solve a longstanding paradox in physics.
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