Time, death and the universe

[MMI]

MMI: Best thread in a long time!

I have to agree with you there.

Again!?

MMI: It might help explain why things never grow younger, or why coffee goes cold, but does not heat up.
The ice block falling back up into the glacier ... surely gravity trumps time here?

But coffee does heat up! You just have to add energy to it. Perhaps time can be reversed by the proper application of energy?

Same problem [for the ice block] as the coffee. If you apply enough energy, at the right time, you can push that ice block back onto the glacier.

I'm not sure I can accept that boiling a kettle, or even counteracting gravity, amounts to reversing time (especially if you have to wait for the "right time") ... but I did allude to reversing physics in my earlier post: same thing but more?

MMI: The arrow of time tends towards entropy (chaos, waste). Does it? Throughout all of elapsed time so far, it seems to me the universe has evolved, not disintegrated. Maybe that will change, but will it affect the direction of time?

The law of entropy only applies in a closed system. The universe as a whole is a closed system, since it contains everything in existence. Parts of the universe temporarily reverse entropy, which is why we have life on Earth, for example, but overall, entropy rules.

I'm way out of my depth here, but it seems to me that the whole of the known universe is at pretty much the same level of chaos. So why not the rest of it?

MMI: Whatever caused the universe to come into being is/was not bound by the laws of physics

We don't know that, though. There could be (and probably are) physical properties which we have yet to unravel. There are many cosmologists who are speculating about how the universe could have formed, using what we know about the current universe. One, or more, of these speculations could prove to be right.

So the hypothesis is that the laws of physics precede physicality itself?

...

MMI: Will I live again? ... I suspect the chances are small.

Actually, the chances are quite large ... One thing life is good at is recycling.

Good point

No, [the sun won't go supernova]. It will eventually expand into a red giant, probably encompassing the Earth itself, before collapsing down into a white dwarf.

Thanks for the info. It suggests that once Earth has been absorbed, the chances of Earth-life being recycled any further are minimal.