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 our rationalization of the concept that ordered things will trend toward a state of disorder over time if allowed to do so. Take a drop of blue dye and drop it in water. At first the water closest to the dye will be bluer than the distant water, but over time the dye will disperse across the water until the water is the same shade of blue throughout. This is the state of maximal disorder, where the dye and water are uniformily distributed.

Entropy is commonly considered to be synonymous with ‘chaos’, much to the detriment of those first trying to understand concept. Entropy is not the breakdown of rules, it is itself a rule of the universe. In fact, entropy is predictable, even measurable. Entropy would have no bearing on the speed of light, but it does on, for example, the dispersal of photons (small units of light) away from the point of origin into an open space.

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