Великолепно

среда, 05 февраля 2014

15:50

Rhysel

Интроверт, социопат, мизантроп (с.)

Отзыв о рассказе А. Азимова "Последняя проблема". На инглише.What's the point in giving you a summery for a 4,000-word short story? So here's what I'll do instead: I'll give you a lesson in physics. Sound good? Cool. Ever hear of the second law of thermodynamics? Yes? But you have no clue what it means? Okay, well we can work with that. Here's what Wikipedia has on the subject:
The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases, because isolated systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium—the state of maximum entropy.

Pretty simple, right? What do you mean you don't understand entropy? Of course you understand entropy, I assure you. Every time you see a sand castle crumble away in the wind, every time your car breaks down on the road, every time somebody you know dies and is gone forever... you are seeing entropy in motion. Entropy is the measure of disorder in a system... a measure of chaos. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that entropy in a closed system, be it your sand castle, car, or life... never decreases, it will only ever increase to maximum.

But here's the thing, it's not really a law by any means. Nothing in all of actual physics states that this must be, physics actually says it's perfectly possible for random sand molecules to be blown in a way where they land and form a perfect sandcastle (instead of making one crumble away). So why not? Why don't we see things like this happen? Statistics. Yes, the second law of thermodynamics is actually a statistical principle; entropy could indeed decrease in a system (any system like this would be considered a perpetual motion machine), but it's just not statistically likely.

Meaning a sand castle could coincidently form by the winds blowing dust randomly..., but it won't. It won't because the statistical likelihood of the wind and molecules to just happen to be in the right position and velocity for this sand castle to just appear is so slim, I do not have enough memory in my computer to type out all the zeros I need to put behind the odds of it happening (1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,...).

This statistical principle is so powerful and universal, we call it a law. It explains a lot of things in our universe. Before we knew about the second law of thermodynamics, it used to bother physicist that we could move in any direction in space (up, down, forward, backward) but we could only move in one direction in time. Space and time being so closely linked, why was it we could only move forward in time? It’s because entropy always increases that we move forward in time (and never back in time), in a way time is just a measure of increasing entropy. We only go from one moment to another as entropy increases.

Ahhh, I see what you are thinking. Yes, our universe is a closed system, and yes that does mean it will die, . You think it's a little sad that in the end chaos will always win? I don't think so, after all life is beautiful don't you think? Life is amazing in that it can bring a little bit of order in this chaotic world, but funny enough, without entropy there would be no life. So I don't think it's sad, it's just the natural state of affairs that we will grow old, live our lives fighting entropy, and we will die. it's really quite beautiful.

If you want to read a book that asks the questions: what if we could defeat entropy? What if we could win? What would happen? Read this book.

@темы: книги, не мое