ENTROPY IS NOT CHAOS

Prince Pioneer

Once upon a time long, long ago on a world far from ours, only just within the next universe, there was a bunch of habitable planets known as Dhoop, where a handsome young prince by the name of Pioneer held his beautiful fiancee in his five upper tentacles.

Everything in their solar system was quite alright, all planets governed by their individual rules but united for all general goals. Prince Pioneer said goodbye to his beloved princess Anima, for he had to go on a minor space patrol mission.

The prince was a prince because he could tell very clearly how things were, and he knew very well, how to direct other folks to do the right things in the proper manner. So he had hardly anything difficult to do. Besides, his father, the revered king of Dhoop, still ran the Union. That’s how he became interested and fascinated by space, time, relativity and all kinds of subjects related.

Of course, this tale is written down in a language from Earth and that is why many of Dhoop’s concepts cannot be conveyed properly. In this tale, I stick to anything that is comprehensive enough.

Whilst travelling through space, he saw that everything was back to smooth and calm. Every now and then there would be some supernova somewhere, or starclusters colliding or black holes sucking up giant suns, but nothing too violent to threaten Dhoop. Their own sun, Sol Dhoop [1] had been warming their planets and preserving life throughout lengthy eras.

The Shake

Only quite recently, there had been an enormous flash of light that passed between their orbits and engulfed almost anything, even lighting up very many distant planets, galaxies and gas clouds. It was thought to be a flash from a supernova closeby, but the scientists were still trying to find out which, when and where.

A few years had passed since the flash. And then, all of a sudden, something shook the universe. It was not just a simple gravitational wave from colliding black holes or other massive objects, for that would only have affected their spacetime just a hardly perceivable tiny bit. This was huge! This was really something different, and not even closeby!

Over the past few billion years there had been signs of something special, for the far away extremely dark spot in the sky – at least a few hundred billion light years remote – had only become darker and darker, larger and larger and then shrunk to an almost imperceptably small spot. But no-one worried, until the enigmatic flash.

Pioneer was thrown over from his seat in the cockpit and his vessel tumbled in the direction opposite to where the flash had come from – directly towards his home planet 4! He feared to get smashed onto the planet, but all of a sudden he saw the planet move away from him, as if an ocean wave had picked it up and tried to wash that ball ashore… The motion lasted many hours, and as Pioneer gained back control over his vessel, he steered around and around, trying to understand what happened. The temperature inside surged but he tried to get closer to his planet and called his base. He did not get through for communication was disturbed, but so far he saw no damage to his home rock.

Apparently this had been an extremely huge pressure wave, proceeding through space at an unimaginable speed. The dark spot, some five hundred billion lightyears away, had suddenly exploded and was busy forming a new universe! As if you, peacefully dwelling in your house, are being pushed aside, house, garden, driveway and all, because a violent new neighbour pops his new house – to big for the space where he puts it - into existence. As if a bubble in your cooking porridge forces its way up to the surface. Or some comparison with particular Europeans and indigenous Americans. 

Devastation

Pioneer had not yet noticed what happened to his home planetary system. Radio communication failed and something smudged the portholes of his vessel. Smudged? Or were they etched? Something might have been eating away the smooth outer layer of the crystal window panes.

He stopped the vessel altogether in so far this was possible, because still new shockwaves rocked the ship. He went down the corridor to other compartments, checking on his crew. Most of them had strapped themselves to their seats, some others thought it safe to evaluate the condition of the ship. From the rear bay one of the crew members had launched a tiny inspection probe, to monitor the outside of the vessel. Pioneer and some crew were stunned by what they saw: the probe showed that almost all of the protective sealing on the hull had been stripped off. And indeed the portholes’ outer layers were etched away. The steel hide wasn’t smooth anymore; it was bulging in many places, pulling strain on the rivets. The edge of the vessel that had been in the direction of the oncoming first shockwave was rendered a blistered cloth with holes. Flashes of static electricity were creeping over the entire hull. Pioneer ordered everyone to abandon ship; every crewmember stepped into his personal rescue cocoon. They were launched instantly and set course to the home planet – only to find death and destruction there. Much of the planet’s atmosphere was blown away, there were blazes everywhere, most of the dwelling domes were destroyed and apparent quakes had rocked the outer crust from one end to the other.

Pioneer and his crew were in great danger themselves: still the pressure wave blew fiercely and bombarded everything with deadly radiation and all sorts of hardly visible plasma… All they had left was hours before all life was gone and their planet, still shaking, repeatedly bulging and compressing, was a lifeless rock, from which everything worth while evaporated.

For ages, Dhoop had considered their vast realm around their sun, a safe and orderly arranged system, thriving in wealth and good manners. Then all of a sudden a new chaotic universe blew everyting into oblivion, creating new worlds for itself, pushing good old orderly things aside. This is a tale that may have repeated many times throughout the ages and this time the universe we - humans - call ‘our universe’ came into existence after a very, very big bang.

'Our' Universe

What we have now, our galaxy, our solar system and our planet, that’s what we call order out of chaos. But as this universe is still young, only a minor 14 billion years old, it has not reached its mature state yet. Most things are in a state of becoming, even a dying star or an evaporating black hole, for in this fully packed universe of ours, crumbling objects enable new ones to build up. But, if building up to become new beautiful objects is considered the goal of becoming orderly out of the chaos of what was before, what then is the ultimate order? Was the singularity that may have existed before the Big Bang the most orderly state, or was that the most chaotic state? Will the universe eventually evolve into the most orderly state – The Big Freeze [2]? Would one not rather consider the state in which all energy is dispersed evenly throughout the cosmos, the ultimate order, rather than maximum entropy? In this contention entropy does not exist as we have perceived it until today.

I will not be around to witness or to account for this contention. I do not even worry if I’m right or wrong, so long as I can interact with my fellow humans on this ‘tiny speck of dust in the vastness of the universe’. I call on all of us, to stay human, act as organic creatures, living togenther in peace, and sing beautiful songs. And meanwhile experience awe over all there is to learn about the cosmos.

Do the leaves of green stay greener through the autumn
Does the colour of the sun turn crimson white
Does a shadow come between us in the winter
Is the movement really light

And I heard a million voices singing
Acting to the story that they had heard about
Does one child know the secret and can say it
Or does it all come out along without you
Along without you
Along without you

Where does reason stop and killing just take over
Does a lamb cry out before we shoot it dead
Are there many more in comfort understanding
Is the movement in the head

And I heard a million voices singing
Acting to the story that they had heard about
Does one child know the secret and can say it
Or does it all come out along without you
Along without you
Along without you  [3]

(Lyrics copied from azlyrics.com, no copyright reference there.)

What is your opinion on entropy? Do you echo what was taught in school, or can you imagine the paradoxical nature of such a theorem?
Do not hesitate to send your comments; if in my humble opinion they are worth publishing, I will do so. And of course, I very much appreciate if experts on these subjects submit their views. Would you then please add your own brief 'about me'?

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[1] Named after one of the suns mentioned in The Ancient - Giants under the Sun on the 1973 Yes album Tales From Topgraphic Oceans.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe#Big_Freeze_or_heat_death
[3] Lyrics from The Ancient - Giants under the Sun on the 1973 Yes album Tales From Topgraphic Oceans