Two Intriguing Ideas Entropy Might be Responsible For

Could entropy be the next step for gravity, or be responsible for creating life?

Hiya!

Entropy is fascinating because it possesses infinite untapped potential. It’s at play in every aspect of our Universe as we know it. Entropy exists anywhere matter does and on the same scales. It’s a lot to wrap your mind around, but once you do, it becomes clear that entropy must have a much larger influence than initially assumed.

I won’t lie — today’s newsletter may feel a bit dense, but it’s worth the brain glitch. By the end, you’ll have learned two intriguing proposals suggesting entropy just may be responsible for everything from gravity to the formation of life itself. To make it easier for you to follow, I’ll first discuss any relevant history or a bit of background, then I’ll talk about the ideas before tying them all together. Ready? Okay, let’s begin.

Could Entropy Play a Role in Gravity?

I mentioned last week in Curious Adventure that a radiation oncologist and writer, Chris Watson, contacted me through my Ko-Fi page. He commissioned me to write an article about his scientific theory called the Entropy Scale Factor (ESF) he’d recently published.

Now I want to share Dr. Watson’s theory with you, but due to limited space, I can’t include everything. So I encourage you to read my article about it in full on Medium if you want to learn more.

Gravity

As you know, scientists today still refer to Einstein’s theory of General Relativity which he introduced over a century ago in 1915 — that gravity is a curvature in the fabric of spacetime in proportion to an object’s mass. In other words, an object’s momentum as it travels through space creates gravity.

But, general relativity is not without issues, nor does it answer all our questions. This is where Dr. Watson’s Estropy Scale Factor (ESF) theory comes in, but his approach does more than provide new answers related to gravity — it might also explain the expansion of space and perhaps even dark matter.

General relativity works great for some situations, such as our planet and black holes, but it falters when explaining more complex systems like galaxies or the entire universe. For the last hundred years, experts have used cosmic inflation, dark matter, and dark energy to explain everything that general relativity can’t. Dr. Watson’s ESF suggests one answer to explain all of them.

See, usually, the total entropy of a system is calculated by adding the entropy of each object/molecule individually, but Dr. Watson takes things a step further. The ESF also calculates the entropy of an object’s impact on others as a group, which he refers to as “constellation entropy.” When we include all of this additional entropy, the result is stronger gravitational effects which explain the behavior of a more complex system that general relativity can’t.