Empire and Entropy: Maxwell into the Extroverse.
Not sure why I selected that title, but maybe it will prove itself. This is a series. This series is about how we figure out what is time. And how time has been relevant to EMPIRE. I am really going about it the long way. But, this series has about the best ideas on my philosophism as you are ever going to find elsewhere. If you feel you are stupid, then look for the human connexions. If you think you think you are smart? Then get ready to be taken to the shed. I pull no punches. I am Irish. I am taking on all the universe. DO you think any puny humanoids are going to dissuade me? You bring out my French proclivities... OK... Let's go... Part the ONE...
For example, lol.. Maybe you like sports. According to you, your team is the good team, and their team is the bad team. It's an emotional, subjective decision, which consequently makes the game fun for you. Makes you feel alive. Almost on an artist's roll, because everything is reduced to the contest of good versus bad with, of course, little threat posed to your personal existence. In reality, all of the choices we will, and of the measurements we make, and all of the information we process, is attended by a significant degree of such emotion and subjectivity. Just being in one point in space and in time actually requires subjectivity and, so, emotion. To everything we do.
In fact, everything we do is on conjecture, or hypothesis. The fact is that we are never at one point in space and time, when the fact is taken into account that all that is in the universe is relative. There is no true inertial frame of reference. Everything is always in movement or acceleration. Except - when it thinks it isn't. You may be fly through space on the face of a whirling globe - you feel pretty much inert, right? Right. So, it is our emotional and subjective component which allows us to deny how we are so fluid and interconnected and relative and without bearings - and so allows us to assume that we are at rest, singular, at one point, here and now, existing as a, "me." Without emotion, we could not be. This is how we move from hypothesis to fact. So-called fact.
Hubble and James Webb are out there, peering off into the distance. And we say that they are looking back in time, almost to where the universe began. But, what we are really doing is projecting a hypothesis, and usually calling it fact. We are not just measuring. Not just observing. We are rooting for our own home team. It might turn out, some day, that we discover that we have entirely been on the wrong side, and this will really hurt our feelings. But, so far, in the few hundred years we have had this thing called science, "what doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger." A few hundred years is not enough to escape heat death. One day, we all must die, along with our tawdry hypotheses. Don't it make you cry?
We see triangles on Earth, and assume that triangles are legal throughout the universe. Or pi is like God, always and everywhere. We measure the speed of light and assume it is constant throughout the universe. And, so, based on this assumption, our measurements of red shift lead us to believe that there is dark matter and energy hiding where we can't see it. Beyond our flash-lights. But, I have argued before, that something like an absolutely straight line - a kind of law - cannot exist too far in the universe. For a variety of related reasons. Everything is all hypotheses - and then the hubris which declares what is, "truth." Not hypotheses, but truth. By way of always extraneous evidence.
But all is really hypothesis, and narcissistic projection. It is only by agreement of the multitude of observers - from atoms to galaxies - that laws are made to set in stone. By agreement of all observers, is reality made. Defined in time. And space. staying within the boundaries of that contract, then, go ahead and project all you want to. Your triangle is a legal ideal.
You might say that these are beyond-Plato ideas. You might say that this is Hegel's dialectic, creating absolutes, but on a vast and intricate, subatomic scale. Involving a little will-to-power, here and there. Constantly evolving. Constantly relating. Always coming out of uncertainty, into the light. From chaos, emerging. Through time and entropy, into heat death, eventually.
It is not really correct to say that there are four forces in the universe, or even that there are four known forces in the universe. What we should say is that, from our perspective - whatever that means - we perform observations which make it look like certain things like forces might exist, but there's no telling if they actually do. They are just rules of thumb, for us. Hypotheses. What we're rooting for. But, in order to communicate amongsst ourselves, we have to assert that many hypotheses are more like facts, even truths. This would be like saying that the Yankees are intrinsically good, and proveably so.
But, instead of saying something so arrogant as, "There are four forces in the universe," at least we can show a little humility and rephrase that as, "There are four measured forces in the known universe." Emphasis on measured - because measurement carries some degree of subjectivity. Uncertainty. Room for more questions. Room for continuing imagination - and will.
OK, so, there are four measured forces in the known universe. They seem to have some indecipherable kind of super-geometric relationship with each other. There may be more forces that we have not yet measured/invented. Some physicist might, one day, conclude that there are as many forces as there are dimensions. And that would be about, what? 64? And everyone a gender? Because, you know, four times four, times four. It's like the compass points, taken into three, no, wait, four dimensions.
I think that there could be, for the sake of imagination only, two other "forces" added to these four. Meta-forces, actually. I would add the fourth dimension as a meta-force, since it is a map outlining every damn thing that happens, or, it is really actually everything that happens. Relatively speaking. So, how can anything escape that force? The fourth dimension acts like it is all forces as one, or, at least it tries.
And, I would add, as the 6th force - a meta-force - the quantum realm. There, you have a whole nuther world of weirdness. And, yet, everything is basically subservient to it, since it permeates every damn thing in the universe. Like the fourth dimension, the quantum realm is everything - so how can anyone escape that force? Yet, somehow, neither of these meta-forces can accommodate the other, so far as we know. And maybe - maybe that is because...
Maybe there is some kind of stratification going on between forces. Some kind of phase-shift thingie, so that you can't really call the quantum realm the same thing as the fourth dimension. Or, so that, u cannot really call electromagnetism as being the same thing as gravity - well, of course, duh! - But, I mean, maybe they are not convertible or even comparable - because they are kind of living in different spheres? Maybe, the universe, is like an onion. Maybe each layer is something different. Maybe they cannot all be combined into one big Theory Of Everything, (the so-called BIG TOE), at least unless this fundamental difference is understood. Like the difference between sound waves and light waves, (as a metaphor). Like the difference between triangles and circles. Or between caterpillars and butterflies. Or steam and a snowflake. How do you squeeze all that together, when you barely know anything about anything?
Let's just keep to the four basic, known, measured forces, (as we are calling our observations), in these next paragraphs. I only mentioned the two extra, "meta-forces," as a kind of set-up, regarding thresholds... For imaginary purposes only, lol. Anyway, let's just keep to the basic four: The gravitation force is felt to be fairly weak, locally, but, it is critical. More importantly, it acts at extremely long distances.
The forces of electromagnetism are strong, locally. But, they, (positive and negative), cancel each other out, over longer distances. And this is a beautiful thing. Something I will talk about in later posts.
The strong, nuclear force is very powerful. It helped us defeat Japan. But, maybe because it is so very strong, it is confined to a very tiny sphere of influence.
And, the same goes for the weak force, which seems to be some kind of vestigal aberration of the electromagnetic force. Very limitted range.
So, you can imagine, that if you are off in the middle of space, then gravity might mean something to you. But, if you are here on Earth, electricity will be much more important. You won't be paying a lot of attention to gravity, or the 2 subatomic forces.
BUT, if you are down at, or below, the atomic level, then your two gods would be the strong force and the weak force. If you were farther away from the nucleus of an atom, then you would be more influenced by the weak force. If you were up close to the nucleus, then you would bow down to the strong force. The whole point of this paragraph is that there is a gradient of relevant forces, depending on your situation. Like the layers of an onion. Like phases. If you are a galaxy out in space, you are thinking about gravity. If you are a proton or neutron, all you think about is the strong force. This is something of a continuum, from gravity to the weak force. But it is really more of a pallet. Notes in a chord.
Now, let's take a trip through the forces. Let's start with what is just a theory: the fourth dimension. Now, we are travelling through the force of gravity. Now, we enter the tame, yet locally tumultuous, realm of electromagnetism. Now we enter the subatomic weak - and then the strong force. (If you think about the strong force, so tiny, and yet everywhere, it seems almost as if so much power was need just to countre the omnipresent force of gravity). And, now we end up in the whole theoretical world of quantum physics. Have you noticed something? Our concept of Time does not really exist in the quantum realm. It does not exist in the subatomic realm of the weak and the strong forces. And our idea of time does not exist in the theoretical map of space-time. Nor does it exist in the wide-ranging fields of gravity. What we know of as time exists somewhere in between these extremes.
Our experience of time exists somewhere in the middle, coincidentally, in the same realm where the polarisations of electromagnetism feel significant. We are local. We live in the experience of time. Not quantum chaos or the quality of loving gravity. And the currents of light and electricity are living right there with us. Yes, there is gravity, and there are these subatomic forces. I am sure they maybe seem more important to our mitochondria, or something. But, what we are consciously aware of, is that time, and electricity, or of supreme importance. Before we 'discovered' electricity? We were almost a different species. With almost different brains. But. Brains that ran on electricity, nonetheless.
As we move through the "continuum" of forces, according to what is most relative to us, we see that, although there are phases, each force blends into the next - and all forces ultimately influence, to various degree. It is a blur as to where gravity is more important than electromagnetism, or as to where the strong force is more important than electromagnetism. One force is predominant for a while, and then there is a blur, and then the next force predominates.
[These things are graded because there must be some outside, intervening influence on the universe. There can be no such thing as an expansion of the universe, or even as any kind of differential within the universe, unless there is some kind of external influence going on, and that would entail some kind of temporal influence. You can say that the universe is expanding, but if you want to say it is only expanding within and of itself, then you've pretty much gotta say that the galaxies and planets are shrinking. Even so, even that requires some kind of external influence. There is an influence beyond expansion per se. Expansion is not the only cause of time. The most likely explanation for this is that the universe is just one wave in a continuous waveform. Even if the universe is considered to be a kind of particle, this still applies].
Long ago, I divided the realms of reality into three domains. As per my philosophy deriving truth from human existence, I determined these to be known from our own perspective. I think that's being honest. But, this was not the microscopic, relative to the human realm, relative to the cosmic realm. I am not Carl Sagan. I divided reality into the subatomic (or quantum) realm, the local realm, and the realm of relativity. I called these the microcosmic, the medicosmic, and the macrocosmic realms. Again, microcosmic is not the same thing as microscopic. Medicosmic has virtually nothing to do with meditation.
Macrocosmic is all about the vast universe, and beyond, of which we are really restricted in measuring. We do not experience time in either the microscopic or the macroscopic realms. We live through time only in our medicosmic realm. Which, deliberately, means we also meditate the other realms. Because, the other forces continue to be at play in and throughout us. Conclusion of this paragraph: We only experience time in one general grade - one condition - of the different forces in reality. That is not to say that time is not irrelevant to operations of these other forces. As I said, other forces continue to influence us, and therefore, they influence us in time. And, also, they tempt us into the eternal, and all that.
The quantum realm, the weak force, the strong force, are almost irrelevant to our experience of time. Almost. The gravitational force - it really does not seem to relevant to our experience of time. But, of course, it plays a part, it cannot be denied. All forces feed into our experience of time. Some essentially cancel others out, in a way. Stuck in here the safe medium of the middle - here is where we can easilly divy out what is temporally relevant. Really, it is largely because we are in the middle that we can easilly experience time. Because, in the middle, things are calm enough for discrete entropy to occur. And, if that doesn't tell us time, what does?
Just to sit, and feel the rush of atoms over your skin. Take in the photons of the sun. Watch the trees as they rustle in the breeze. Feel the thunder in your knees as you rise to greet your niece. Feel the rush of blood in your neck beneath the noose. These are the times we love, and believe. These are the play of infinity beneath our feet.
So, what we are discussing now, is only the realm of the Medicosm, where time is experienced coherently, although we bear in mind that all other forces, known or not, are feeding into this experience, in one way or another. Even if we think we are playing in only one universe, there is probably some kind of beyond at play, influencing us, in one tiny degree or another. Kind of like how radioactivity influences you in your day-to-day. You don't see it. You don't feel it. But, one day, in time, it will likely kill you. Because wut - because it is so abnormal.
In the realm of the medicosm, entropy is king. On Earth, basically, the way we judge the passage of time is by measuring how entropy degrades this or that, even a bit of radium or carbon. It is really, really hard, as far as I can tell, to distinguish what is the degrative process of entropy, and what is the actually phenomenon of time itself. The two are inseparably interconnected. But, what is time, and what is just things decaying in time? Are things decaying actually time itself? This is a very knotty question. Go no further, schoolgirl virgin NAZIs.
What is entropy? Entropy is the observed devolution (wut?) of order into chaos over time. A kettle of tea spews steam into the air, and that is entropy. Add heat, and that gets you more chaotic molecules, and therefore more entropy. Since you cannot put all those molecules back into the teapot, without exorbitantly excessive energy, then it is pretty obvious that entropy travels in one direction - just like time. Pretty much, most venerable brains believe that the universe will ultimately entropise itself out in heat death, and that will be the end of time - and - I still don't know if that means that entropy = time.
But, the best way measure the passage of time, is by using such things as atomic clocks, like those at the National Bureau of Standards, in Boulder, Colorado. Their clocks measure time by the highly predictable decay radioactive elements. But, wait a minute! W@ho is to say that that decay is not caused by entropy? And not by time, per se?! We really don't know what we are doing. And that is so much what I love about science. I honestly think that science is just about the last place where a schoolboy tool can ask an honest question without being cancelled on social media, and all that.
So, here we get into what is time, and are our measurements actually of time, or, much less, the same thing as time? Yes, it is good to measure the decadence of atoms, or radioactive elements, or of steam, or of whatever - but is that, itself, a measurement of time? Or, is that just a measure meant of what happens IN time? Do these things create time, or are they created by the whole conspiracy of time? It's pretty damn interesting. Some people like to just stick to information theory: how certain turns of cards will reap this or that outcome. But, I really don't see how that kind of information theory comes any closer to explaining time than does the thermodynamic law of entropy, which is, nevertheless, related. I have to say: I really, really honour all of the thinking that has gone on before I ever got here. I mean, we are an astonishing thing, we are.
Suspending, for now, whether there may be any relevance between our measurements of what happens in time, (entropy), and time itself* (later), let's take a look at the study of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is, basically, things get hot, and so hot things flow to cold things, since there is more chaos in hot molecules. Chaos, according to science, shall prevail. Mind you, I am not on any kind of mission to refute this. Absolutely not. I am very much in love with entropy.
The second law of thermodynamics maintains that high energy degrades into low energy over time - (over time!). Molecules heated in a kettle get all excited, and so they spread out all over the place, and they can never be put back into that kettle - just as time cannot be reversed. Cannot time be reverse because things like this cannot happen? Or cannot things like this happen because time cannot be reversed? I think that there is probably some overriding time going on, due to extraneous influences upon the universe. However, for now, I want to restrict the discussion to entropy now...
There early emerged the concept of some kind of demon that could somehow reverse entropy, and so create order. They called this, "Maxwell's Demon." We know that Mawell's Demon is about as possible as a perpetual motion machine, or so on. It is impossible to put the chaotic energy of entropy back into any kind of bottle - without some kind of ridiculous - and uneconomical - amount of energy. Compare Maxwell's Demon to an air conditioner. You can only turn heat into cold if you expend an awful lot of electricity. And, we all know that electricity is very much interconnected with thermodynamic reality.
And we are nowhere near the point of this post, which has become a series... But, I am going to let you go with this illustration of how Maxwell's Demon tried, but failed, to put chaos back into the box of order. I think that imperial powers had a lot invested in this sort of hope. And. They still do. But, empires have always been undermined by the reality of entropy. And that is what this series is about.
Scientists peek inside the mind of Maxwell’s demon
ORDER FROM DISORDER Maxwell’s Demon (illustrated above) is a hypothetical creature that could illegally decrease entropy, or disorder, by separating faster
For example, lol.. Maybe you like sports. According to you, your team is the good team, and their team is the bad team. It's an emotional, subjective decision, which consequently makes the game fun for you. Makes you feel alive. Almost on an artist's roll, because everything is reduced to the contest of good versus bad with, of course, little threat posed to your personal existence. In reality, all of the choices we will, and of the measurements we make, and all of the information we process, is attended by a significant degree of such emotion and subjectivity. Just being in one point in space and in time actually requires subjectivity and, so, emotion. To everything we do.
In fact, everything we do is on conjecture, or hypothesis. The fact is that we are never at one point in space and time, when the fact is taken into account that all that is in the universe is relative. There is no true inertial frame of reference. Everything is always in movement or acceleration. Except - when it thinks it isn't. You may be fly through space on the face of a whirling globe - you feel pretty much inert, right? Right. So, it is our emotional and subjective component which allows us to deny how we are so fluid and interconnected and relative and without bearings - and so allows us to assume that we are at rest, singular, at one point, here and now, existing as a, "me." Without emotion, we could not be. This is how we move from hypothesis to fact. So-called fact.
Hubble and James Webb are out there, peering off into the distance. And we say that they are looking back in time, almost to where the universe began. But, what we are really doing is projecting a hypothesis, and usually calling it fact. We are not just measuring. Not just observing. We are rooting for our own home team. It might turn out, some day, that we discover that we have entirely been on the wrong side, and this will really hurt our feelings. But, so far, in the few hundred years we have had this thing called science, "what doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger." A few hundred years is not enough to escape heat death. One day, we all must die, along with our tawdry hypotheses. Don't it make you cry?
We see triangles on Earth, and assume that triangles are legal throughout the universe. Or pi is like God, always and everywhere. We measure the speed of light and assume it is constant throughout the universe. And, so, based on this assumption, our measurements of red shift lead us to believe that there is dark matter and energy hiding where we can't see it. Beyond our flash-lights. But, I have argued before, that something like an absolutely straight line - a kind of law - cannot exist too far in the universe. For a variety of related reasons. Everything is all hypotheses - and then the hubris which declares what is, "truth." Not hypotheses, but truth. By way of always extraneous evidence.
But all is really hypothesis, and narcissistic projection. It is only by agreement of the multitude of observers - from atoms to galaxies - that laws are made to set in stone. By agreement of all observers, is reality made. Defined in time. And space. staying within the boundaries of that contract, then, go ahead and project all you want to. Your triangle is a legal ideal.
You might say that these are beyond-Plato ideas. You might say that this is Hegel's dialectic, creating absolutes, but on a vast and intricate, subatomic scale. Involving a little will-to-power, here and there. Constantly evolving. Constantly relating. Always coming out of uncertainty, into the light. From chaos, emerging. Through time and entropy, into heat death, eventually.
It is not really correct to say that there are four forces in the universe, or even that there are four known forces in the universe. What we should say is that, from our perspective - whatever that means - we perform observations which make it look like certain things like forces might exist, but there's no telling if they actually do. They are just rules of thumb, for us. Hypotheses. What we're rooting for. But, in order to communicate amongsst ourselves, we have to assert that many hypotheses are more like facts, even truths. This would be like saying that the Yankees are intrinsically good, and proveably so.
But, instead of saying something so arrogant as, "There are four forces in the universe," at least we can show a little humility and rephrase that as, "There are four measured forces in the known universe." Emphasis on measured - because measurement carries some degree of subjectivity. Uncertainty. Room for more questions. Room for continuing imagination - and will.
OK, so, there are four measured forces in the known universe. They seem to have some indecipherable kind of super-geometric relationship with each other. There may be more forces that we have not yet measured/invented. Some physicist might, one day, conclude that there are as many forces as there are dimensions. And that would be about, what? 64? And everyone a gender? Because, you know, four times four, times four. It's like the compass points, taken into three, no, wait, four dimensions.
I think that there could be, for the sake of imagination only, two other "forces" added to these four. Meta-forces, actually. I would add the fourth dimension as a meta-force, since it is a map outlining every damn thing that happens, or, it is really actually everything that happens. Relatively speaking. So, how can anything escape that force? The fourth dimension acts like it is all forces as one, or, at least it tries.
And, I would add, as the 6th force - a meta-force - the quantum realm. There, you have a whole nuther world of weirdness. And, yet, everything is basically subservient to it, since it permeates every damn thing in the universe. Like the fourth dimension, the quantum realm is everything - so how can anyone escape that force? Yet, somehow, neither of these meta-forces can accommodate the other, so far as we know. And maybe - maybe that is because...
Maybe there is some kind of stratification going on between forces. Some kind of phase-shift thingie, so that you can't really call the quantum realm the same thing as the fourth dimension. Or, so that, u cannot really call electromagnetism as being the same thing as gravity - well, of course, duh! - But, I mean, maybe they are not convertible or even comparable - because they are kind of living in different spheres? Maybe, the universe, is like an onion. Maybe each layer is something different. Maybe they cannot all be combined into one big Theory Of Everything, (the so-called BIG TOE), at least unless this fundamental difference is understood. Like the difference between sound waves and light waves, (as a metaphor). Like the difference between triangles and circles. Or between caterpillars and butterflies. Or steam and a snowflake. How do you squeeze all that together, when you barely know anything about anything?
Let's just keep to the four basic, known, measured forces, (as we are calling our observations), in these next paragraphs. I only mentioned the two extra, "meta-forces," as a kind of set-up, regarding thresholds... For imaginary purposes only, lol. Anyway, let's just keep to the basic four: The gravitation force is felt to be fairly weak, locally, but, it is critical. More importantly, it acts at extremely long distances.
The forces of electromagnetism are strong, locally. But, they, (positive and negative), cancel each other out, over longer distances. And this is a beautiful thing. Something I will talk about in later posts.
The strong, nuclear force is very powerful. It helped us defeat Japan. But, maybe because it is so very strong, it is confined to a very tiny sphere of influence.
And, the same goes for the weak force, which seems to be some kind of vestigal aberration of the electromagnetic force. Very limitted range.
So, you can imagine, that if you are off in the middle of space, then gravity might mean something to you. But, if you are here on Earth, electricity will be much more important. You won't be paying a lot of attention to gravity, or the 2 subatomic forces.
BUT, if you are down at, or below, the atomic level, then your two gods would be the strong force and the weak force. If you were farther away from the nucleus of an atom, then you would be more influenced by the weak force. If you were up close to the nucleus, then you would bow down to the strong force. The whole point of this paragraph is that there is a gradient of relevant forces, depending on your situation. Like the layers of an onion. Like phases. If you are a galaxy out in space, you are thinking about gravity. If you are a proton or neutron, all you think about is the strong force. This is something of a continuum, from gravity to the weak force. But it is really more of a pallet. Notes in a chord.
Now, let's take a trip through the forces. Let's start with what is just a theory: the fourth dimension. Now, we are travelling through the force of gravity. Now, we enter the tame, yet locally tumultuous, realm of electromagnetism. Now we enter the subatomic weak - and then the strong force. (If you think about the strong force, so tiny, and yet everywhere, it seems almost as if so much power was need just to countre the omnipresent force of gravity). And, now we end up in the whole theoretical world of quantum physics. Have you noticed something? Our concept of Time does not really exist in the quantum realm. It does not exist in the subatomic realm of the weak and the strong forces. And our idea of time does not exist in the theoretical map of space-time. Nor does it exist in the wide-ranging fields of gravity. What we know of as time exists somewhere in between these extremes.
Our experience of time exists somewhere in the middle, coincidentally, in the same realm where the polarisations of electromagnetism feel significant. We are local. We live in the experience of time. Not quantum chaos or the quality of loving gravity. And the currents of light and electricity are living right there with us. Yes, there is gravity, and there are these subatomic forces. I am sure they maybe seem more important to our mitochondria, or something. But, what we are consciously aware of, is that time, and electricity, or of supreme importance. Before we 'discovered' electricity? We were almost a different species. With almost different brains. But. Brains that ran on electricity, nonetheless.
As we move through the "continuum" of forces, according to what is most relative to us, we see that, although there are phases, each force blends into the next - and all forces ultimately influence, to various degree. It is a blur as to where gravity is more important than electromagnetism, or as to where the strong force is more important than electromagnetism. One force is predominant for a while, and then there is a blur, and then the next force predominates.
[These things are graded because there must be some outside, intervening influence on the universe. There can be no such thing as an expansion of the universe, or even as any kind of differential within the universe, unless there is some kind of external influence going on, and that would entail some kind of temporal influence. You can say that the universe is expanding, but if you want to say it is only expanding within and of itself, then you've pretty much gotta say that the galaxies and planets are shrinking. Even so, even that requires some kind of external influence. There is an influence beyond expansion per se. Expansion is not the only cause of time. The most likely explanation for this is that the universe is just one wave in a continuous waveform. Even if the universe is considered to be a kind of particle, this still applies].
Long ago, I divided the realms of reality into three domains. As per my philosophy deriving truth from human existence, I determined these to be known from our own perspective. I think that's being honest. But, this was not the microscopic, relative to the human realm, relative to the cosmic realm. I am not Carl Sagan. I divided reality into the subatomic (or quantum) realm, the local realm, and the realm of relativity. I called these the microcosmic, the medicosmic, and the macrocosmic realms. Again, microcosmic is not the same thing as microscopic. Medicosmic has virtually nothing to do with meditation.
Macrocosmic is all about the vast universe, and beyond, of which we are really restricted in measuring. We do not experience time in either the microscopic or the macroscopic realms. We live through time only in our medicosmic realm. Which, deliberately, means we also meditate the other realms. Because, the other forces continue to be at play in and throughout us. Conclusion of this paragraph: We only experience time in one general grade - one condition - of the different forces in reality. That is not to say that time is not irrelevant to operations of these other forces. As I said, other forces continue to influence us, and therefore, they influence us in time. And, also, they tempt us into the eternal, and all that.
The quantum realm, the weak force, the strong force, are almost irrelevant to our experience of time. Almost. The gravitational force - it really does not seem to relevant to our experience of time. But, of course, it plays a part, it cannot be denied. All forces feed into our experience of time. Some essentially cancel others out, in a way. Stuck in here the safe medium of the middle - here is where we can easilly divy out what is temporally relevant. Really, it is largely because we are in the middle that we can easilly experience time. Because, in the middle, things are calm enough for discrete entropy to occur. And, if that doesn't tell us time, what does?
Just to sit, and feel the rush of atoms over your skin. Take in the photons of the sun. Watch the trees as they rustle in the breeze. Feel the thunder in your knees as you rise to greet your niece. Feel the rush of blood in your neck beneath the noose. These are the times we love, and believe. These are the play of infinity beneath our feet.
So, what we are discussing now, is only the realm of the Medicosm, where time is experienced coherently, although we bear in mind that all other forces, known or not, are feeding into this experience, in one way or another. Even if we think we are playing in only one universe, there is probably some kind of beyond at play, influencing us, in one tiny degree or another. Kind of like how radioactivity influences you in your day-to-day. You don't see it. You don't feel it. But, one day, in time, it will likely kill you. Because wut - because it is so abnormal.
In the realm of the medicosm, entropy is king. On Earth, basically, the way we judge the passage of time is by measuring how entropy degrades this or that, even a bit of radium or carbon. It is really, really hard, as far as I can tell, to distinguish what is the degrative process of entropy, and what is the actually phenomenon of time itself. The two are inseparably interconnected. But, what is time, and what is just things decaying in time? Are things decaying actually time itself? This is a very knotty question. Go no further, schoolgirl virgin NAZIs.
What is entropy? Entropy is the observed devolution (wut?) of order into chaos over time. A kettle of tea spews steam into the air, and that is entropy. Add heat, and that gets you more chaotic molecules, and therefore more entropy. Since you cannot put all those molecules back into the teapot, without exorbitantly excessive energy, then it is pretty obvious that entropy travels in one direction - just like time. Pretty much, most venerable brains believe that the universe will ultimately entropise itself out in heat death, and that will be the end of time - and - I still don't know if that means that entropy = time.
But, the best way measure the passage of time, is by using such things as atomic clocks, like those at the National Bureau of Standards, in Boulder, Colorado. Their clocks measure time by the highly predictable decay radioactive elements. But, wait a minute! W@ho is to say that that decay is not caused by entropy? And not by time, per se?! We really don't know what we are doing. And that is so much what I love about science. I honestly think that science is just about the last place where a schoolboy tool can ask an honest question without being cancelled on social media, and all that.
So, here we get into what is time, and are our measurements actually of time, or, much less, the same thing as time? Yes, it is good to measure the decadence of atoms, or radioactive elements, or of steam, or of whatever - but is that, itself, a measurement of time? Or, is that just a measure meant of what happens IN time? Do these things create time, or are they created by the whole conspiracy of time? It's pretty damn interesting. Some people like to just stick to information theory: how certain turns of cards will reap this or that outcome. But, I really don't see how that kind of information theory comes any closer to explaining time than does the thermodynamic law of entropy, which is, nevertheless, related. I have to say: I really, really honour all of the thinking that has gone on before I ever got here. I mean, we are an astonishing thing, we are.
Suspending, for now, whether there may be any relevance between our measurements of what happens in time, (entropy), and time itself* (later), let's take a look at the study of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is, basically, things get hot, and so hot things flow to cold things, since there is more chaos in hot molecules. Chaos, according to science, shall prevail. Mind you, I am not on any kind of mission to refute this. Absolutely not. I am very much in love with entropy.
The second law of thermodynamics maintains that high energy degrades into low energy over time - (over time!). Molecules heated in a kettle get all excited, and so they spread out all over the place, and they can never be put back into that kettle - just as time cannot be reversed. Cannot time be reverse because things like this cannot happen? Or cannot things like this happen because time cannot be reversed? I think that there is probably some overriding time going on, due to extraneous influences upon the universe. However, for now, I want to restrict the discussion to entropy now...
There early emerged the concept of some kind of demon that could somehow reverse entropy, and so create order. They called this, "Maxwell's Demon." We know that Mawell's Demon is about as possible as a perpetual motion machine, or so on. It is impossible to put the chaotic energy of entropy back into any kind of bottle - without some kind of ridiculous - and uneconomical - amount of energy. Compare Maxwell's Demon to an air conditioner. You can only turn heat into cold if you expend an awful lot of electricity. And, we all know that electricity is very much interconnected with thermodynamic reality.
And we are nowhere near the point of this post, which has become a series... But, I am going to let you go with this illustration of how Maxwell's Demon tried, but failed, to put chaos back into the box of order. I think that imperial powers had a lot invested in this sort of hope. And. They still do. But, empires have always been undermined by the reality of entropy. And that is what this series is about.
Scientists peek inside the mind of Maxwell’s demon
ORDER FROM DISORDER Maxwell’s Demon (illustrated above) is a hypothetical creature that could illegally decrease entropy, or disorder, by separating faster