The Universe Is A Disaster

Blog, Science — January 28, 2010 at 4:20

Scientists like to study a lot of things, why old people lose their minds all the time, the average lifespan of a deep Amazonian beetle, and in the case of a recent study, how messed-up our Universe is. How do you measure messed-up-edness you may ask? Entropy. Entropy is basically the disorder in the universe, because when the whole thing started, Big Bang or otherwise, the entropy was low, pretty much everything was how it should’ve been because it just started, but over time as stuff collects, stars end, so on so forth, the disorder becomes a raging problem for in particular life, us humans, the Klingons, or the Predator species. Anyway, a new calculation by a couple of ANU Research School of Astronomy physicists has led them to believe that entropy is 30% higher than previously thought, mostly due to super-massive black holes, and we’re not talking about the Muse song here. It’s actually an interesting read if you enjoy nerdy science-speak and all.

We considered all contributions to the entropy of the observable universe: stars, star light, the cosmic microwave background. We even made an estimate of the entropy of dark matter. But it’s the entropy of super-massive black holes that dominates the entropy of the universe. When we used the new data on the number and size of super-massive black holes, we found that the entropy of the observable universe is about 30 times larger than previous calculations,” said Mr Egan.

“Contrary to common opinion, the maintenance of all the complicated structures we see around us — galaxies, stars, hurricanes and kangaroos — have the net effect of increasing the disorder and entropy of the universe. But to be fair, their contributions are negligible compared to the entropy of super-massive black holes,” added Dr Lineweaver.

Related Links:
Universe Is 30 Times More Run Down Than Thought, Astronomers Find

Tags: astrophysics, black holes, entropy, Featured, galaxy, mass, Science, stars, universe