SELF

18

S.B. Karavashkin and O.N. Karavashkina

Some improvements to the definition of entropy of macrosystem

S.B. Karavashkin and O.N. Karavashkina

Special Laboratory for Fundamental Elaboration SELF

187 apt., 38 bldg., Prospect Gagarina, Kharkov, 61140, Ukraine

phone +38 (057) 7370624

e-mail: selftrans@yandex.ru , selflab@mail.ru

We will comprehensively study the phenomenological and statistical description of the concept of entropy and of the related law of growing entropy. We will consider not only classical examples related to the heat transfer but a broader amount of phenomena that determine both energy dissipation and accumulation in a limited volume caused by gravitational interaction of considerable galactic-scale masses. This consideration will lead us to a conclusion that the conception of entropy does not adequately describe the processes in the universe, so we may not use it in forming the gnosiological conclusions of thermal death of the universe. Moreover, the idea of entropy is discrepant even to describe the laboratory models, as it is based on illegal transformations made when derived in statistical physics.

Keywords: theoretical physics, astrophysics, thermodynamics, entropy of the system, irreversible processes, reversible processes, conservative system, gravitational compression of a cloud, Gibbs distribution

Classnames by MSC 2000: 28D20; 37A35; 37A40; 37A60; 85A15; 85-08

Classnames by PASC 2001: 05.70.Ln; 65.40.Gr; 82.60.Qr; 95.30.-k; 95.30.Sf

1. Introduction

This study was caused by the ambiguousness of today entropy conception that often leads to wrong conclusions and sensational apocalyptic predictions like thermal death of the universe. There are lots of them. We can give some examples: “Processes in which the entropy grows make time denser; consequently, they radiate time. This means, the density of time grows when the substance loses its organisation. Already from this circumstance we can conclude that the time bears the organisation of negentropy that can be passed to another substance – to a sensor… The whole space, whole Universe is projected onto the time axis as one point and, consequently, has not dimension for the time. So the time density variation caused by the process at some point of space, e.g. on the star, has to take place at once in all the World, only decreasing with the distance inversely proportional to its square” [1, p. 98].

“The theory of fundamental field shows such object existing. This is the physical vacuum that threads all the matter surrounding us, or rather all the surrounding substance, and at the same time does not make with it a trivial heat exchange, in other words – it is not heated in a common thermodynamical meaning of heat and is, in the thermodynamical view, in the state of absolute zero. Between the elements of physical vacuum, its structural elements and surrounding atomic matter, there exists the informative, not energetical (? – Authors) exchange that allows the structures of atomic matter to record the information on the structures of physical vacuum and to stock it indefinitely long time” [2, p. 352].

This was Clausius who had put the origin for this chain of phantasmagoric ‘projects’ in thermodynamics. “In today thermodynamics, the second law is formulated as the law of growing entropy. When Clausius literally applied the second law of energetics to the Universe as whole, it made him a conclusion of inevitable thermal death of the Universe, i.e. to such its state in which all processes will stop due to the entire balance of temperatures” [3, p. 122]. By a common conviction, “The law that determines the trend of thermal processes can be formulated as the law of growing entropy: with all thermal processes occurring in the closed-loop system the entropy of the system grows; the utmost value of entropy of the closed-loop system is achievable at thermal balance” [4, p. 213]. Proceeding from this, “In pre-relativistic cosmological applications of thermodynamics, the universe as the whole was usually thought as a such thermodynamically closed-loop system for which the achievable state of thermodynamic (static) equilibrium exists. The entire area covered by our observations is obviously not in such state, and in its scale the entropy grows. One of the first suppositions was, the same is true for the entire universe. But in this case the universe has to tend to this state, so that the thermodynamical processes in it gradually fall, they cannot last infinitely long time and in however large scale (the Clausius hypothesis of ‘thermal death of the universe’). As this state yet had not time enough to become steady, it remains to suppose that in the past these processes also could not last indefinitely long time. As the way out from this difficulty that gave the ground for theological conclusions, there was pointed another possibility – that the universe as a whole is eternally in the state of statistical equilibrium, and the whole its part covered by observations is located within the region of giant, now attenuating, fluctuation (L. Boltsmann’s fluctuation hypothesis)… In these thermodynamical derivations, gravity was ignored. When taken into account, it brought new difficulties” [5, p. 491].

We can give much more citations. All their considerations follow from an indefinite conception of entropy and from the fact that this uncertainty has been broadened onto the gnosiologic aspects of physics. As we already said, it required to put in order the issues related to the conception of entropy of macrosystem and other related issues.