if entropy is an inherent part of our universe, why does anything like a physical constant exist?

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Like, I think in terms of a musical instrument; if it’s played and played and played and played, over time it’ll get out of tune. And I would think the various physical “constants” of the universe would work in roughly the same way – over time, there’d be variations due to entropy. But, for example, the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, and continues to be constant. If entropy is an unavoidable aspect of our universe, shouldn’t it affect the speed of light in a vacuum too? Wouldn’t we expect to see some sort of slowdown or at least variation over time as a result of entropy?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Entropy is an emergent property. It exists because things move around following these laws that have these constants. There’s nothing in any of those laws that says entropy must increase. Every individual particle in a system can obey the same laws and become more ordered over time without violating any laws. The problem is that it’s extremely unlikely, infinitesimaly unlikely.

Take a room that’s nicely organized. Now randomize the positions of everything in the room. Now it’s disorganized, entropy has increased. Now randomize the positions of everything again, it’s still disorganized. It’s entirely possible that you can randomize everything back to where it belong and you have an organized room again, but there’s only 1 way the room is organized, and n! ways it’s disorganized, so you’re much more likely to get a disorganized state than an organized one.

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