The Lack of Disorder Is One of the Greatest Mysteries of the Universe
Science provides us with the illusion that it has explained a great deal.
By describing the “creation” of the Universe in mathematical terms and models we have pushed the riddles further away from us, while the mysteries of the true origin is really just as unresolved. One can only guess and speculate.
Some cosmologists suggest that Universes originates inside other Universes, that the world is an endless Chinese box of spaces that comes into being for a time, with its Milky Ways and its stars, and then disappear again.
There is no beginning and no end, just a swarm of worlds that come and go. Others think that our Universe can have come into existence as a grain of sand on the shore of a multiverse.
The mysteries of creation become even more unmanageable when
one includes the paradoxes of quantum mechanics. The arrow of time points towards cosmic darkness. Why is it like that? And does it have to be like that?
The stream of time is linked to the second law of thermodynamics, the one that expresses that entropy (or disorder) must grow “in all closed systems”. Or, to put it in a different way, in any physical system, where nothing is exchanged with the outside environment, entropy always increases.
Time moves in the direction where everything falls apart. We are alive because entropy is low within us. The Sun gives us the high-value energy that we need to exist: light that builds up microorganisms and algae far down in the food chain.
Here, the high-quality solar energy is transformed into almost only heat that radiates back towards space. What the Earth gives back to the cold space is less valuable than what it receives. The difference is the price nature has to pay for life to exist.
How can the Universe, after 14 billion years, still provide us with the low entropy, high-value energy enough to create life? How can the Universe remain in this unreal state of order?
The reason is perhaps hidden inside the creation process where the Universe, or the origin of the Universe, was in a state of extremely low entropy. Why is this state so extraordinary?
The likely scenario, according to the laws of nature, is that matter is lumped as much as possible, like stars and black holes and major structures.
The famous mathematician Roger Penrose has suggested that if matter collapses into a black hole, the entropy will increase. And if the black hole is allowed to detonate the entropy should still be high.
Today, it is assumed that the largest contributor to our Universe’s entropy is black holes. And if our universe came into existence by a previous collapsing universe the entropy would be high from start and we would never have existed.
But we Do exist and this is because the entropy at the beginning of our Universe was extremely low. How can that be possible and why is it still low enough to support life?
It seems that because of the expansion of the universe, entropy can increase but at the same time be diluted. This could mean that the disorder is kept on a safe distance from life without breaking the laws of physics. We don’t know exactly how this works because there are many unknown parameters.
Big Bang is not the first thing that happened in the chain of events that created our Universe, and the observable part of the Universe is not the end of the Universe. Can we even consider the Universe as a closed system? Does the second law of thermodynamics still apply if there is no heat left in the system?
The “program” that controls the creation of the universe must have made sure that the entropy was low already from beginning. The consequently means that the order of nature anticipated that the creation would continue long after the moment where space and time and energy jumped into existence.
The possibility of creation was built into the original program. And we still seem to live and thrive out of this endless supply of order from the beginning of time.
