Information is everything, everything is information even
nothing is information, nothing is part of everything. The most basic
information is the elementary particle. Can we unite modern understanding of
information with steam engine physics? Of course the ultimate of steam engine
physics is entropy, particularly the second law of thermodynamics.
The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can
not be created or destroyed, it merely changes form. The second law of
thermodynamics says that entropy of a system increases with time. Energy for
doing work decreases as the system becomes more stable, as information becomes
more complex. How can we express this concept in terms of basic information,
the particle, if it applies at all. It might help to understand the second law
of thermodynamics as sating that the more complex a system becomes; the less
free energy is available for doing work, potential energy.
The most basic information package is the elementary
particle. In nature, elementary particles often do not exist alone but as
atoms, at least two elementary particles will create an atom, keeping things as
basic as possible, we want to see entropy in particles, not to discuss
terminology. What happens when two particles get together and create a new
system. Entropy should be able to help. The second law of thermodynamics
basically says as information becomes more complex, more stable, the less free
energy, Ḟ, is available to do work.
Take two particles i and j. they unite to create a
system, and the resultant free energy of the system can be represented
basically by equation 1.
Ḟ = Ḟi
+ Ḟj – Ḅ (1)
where
Ḅ =
energy required to hold new system together
Equation 1 can be illustrated by figure 1 below.
Ḅ is important energy, it is the energy that is used to
hold the new system together. This energy must be sacrificed by both particles
i and j. This energy was previously free but is now being used to hold the
system together, that is why the more complex the information package, the more
stable a system, that stability is caused by loss of free energy as it is used
to hold the system together.
However, equation 1 and figure 1 neat as they are do not
give the whole picture. To get a firmer understanding of what is going on we
need to also acknowledge that there is free energy, Ḟ, as well as energy that
is not potentially available for work, entropy, s, and then we have the total
energy, E of the system. E, total energy is:
E = Ḟ + Ē (2)
where
Ē = all other energy that is
not Ḟ
An elementary particle is a system, the most basic
system. When we include total energy, figure 1 becomes figure 2.
We have a new relationship we can see:
(3)
Equation 3 is the two particle solution
as illustrated by figure 2. But we know the universe is not a two particle
solution, we can say the amount of free energy in the universe at any one time
is:
(4)
Ḟt-1 is the amount of free
energy in the last time period.
N is the number of systems involved
These thoughts where developed whilst writing an essay about information, probability and the universe.
Bhekuzulu Khumalo
No comments:
Post a Comment