Thinking back to high school physics, energy is neither created nor destroyed, but can be rendered “unusuable” by entropy. What would I have to do to increase the entropy of the universe, effectively shortening its lifespan? I assume that leaving the refrigerator open while I wonder what I want for dinner isn’t it.
You can’t. Doing this would require pouring a significant fraction of the universe’s energy into an unusable form. That way beyond your power, I’m betting.
There’s probably not much you can do to increase entropy on a universal scale, or indeed, even on a planetary one. (We make a big fuss about our impact on the environment, but heck,it’ll still be here and going strong when the future ascendents to the throne of “dominant species” are digging up our fossils and arguing what caused our mass extinction.) You’d certainly increase entropy by sinking the Solar System into a collapstar–Hawking demonstrated that gravitational singularities have the highest possible entropy per mass/energy content–but if you can do that you need to stop posting on the SMDB and start renting your services to would-be galactic tyrants.
It’s not exactly clear how you would measure entropy on a universal scale, anyway, or indeed, that the conventional thermodynamic definition of entropy applies. Entropy is a concept that applies to bounded systems; the Universe (per Big Bang explainations) is finite in mass/energy accounting, but unbounded in size. If the universe is truely and irreversibly inflationary, then the maximum entropy potential will increase at a rate greater than the amount of entropy you produce. Think of a volume of air, unconstrained, which when heated will just expand indefinitely, absorbing the additional heat without becoming more “disordered”.
There are other forms of entropy which might be more relevent on a cosmological scale. In information theory, entropy represents the amount of information you can usefully extract from a system before it becomes unstable, sort of like pulling cards from a house of cards until there are too few to remain upright. And in quantum dynamic terms, entropy of a system represents how much information you can determine about the instantaneous quantum states of its components; a Bose-Einstein condensate is considered to be a minimum entropy configuration, as all of its individual components are aligned in a single massively quanitized field.
In a sense, the expansion of the Universe (if it is irreversible and accelerating, as we currently observe and hypothesize to be) is similar in many ways to the effect of a black hole, and in fact cosmologists sometimes refer to the regime where the accelerating expansion of space results in light redshifting to zero (or below perceivability, anyway) as an event horizon, analogous to that region in a black hole where light can no longer escape. Eventually, as the expansion continues to accelerate, we’ll find that more and more of the universe will disappear, until even more local phenomena–the Local Supercluster, the Milky Way Galaxy, and even our own Solar System–accelerates out of sight; shortly thereafter, the same will happen to our planet, bodies, molecules, component atoms, and even subatomic particles, so that no particle will be able to interact with any other bit. We’ll be, in effect, pasted upon the event horizon of the Universe, stretched out by space like the Coyote after a particularly stupendous failure of some Acme Co. device. (Meep-meep.)
That sort of “entropy”, if you can call it that, owes to the expansion of space, which is retarded (locally) by the combined presence of mass and “positive” gravitional energy. suppose, by dispersing mass, you can contribute in your own infinitesimal and pathetic ape-like way to the accelerated dissolution to the Universe, but I’ve a feeling that our ubergalactic overloads could care less. OTOH, if you can figure out how to create a significant and stable field of negative energy density you might be able to do something about your problem, plus you’ll make all the Star Trek geeks really happy, and both the boys in Oslo and those in the Mephistophelian-influenced building in Washington, D.C. will probably come around with large checks and shiny medals. Just don’t do it in my neighborhood, okay?
Stranger
Well, shit. There goes my plans for the rest of the evening.
Thanks for the answer, quite complete as usual.
If you find that to be a downer, try worshipping Eris Discordia and seeing what happens.
Wait. Just wait.
Wow, your plans are far more ambitious than mine. Normally, I just pick up a good book and sip some whiskey with Ella playing in the background. That is, unless Her Majesty’s Service calls upon me to defeat a world-threatening megalomanic and his idiosyncratic, utterly devoted henchman, but that doesn’t happen more than once or twice a month, tops.
Stranger
Okay, Stranger. Fine. I get it. You’re the smartest one in the thread. so smart that my eyes glaze over reading your post. Congratulations.But now that you’ve answered the question (or at least, I assume you did)…
what if I wanted to decrease the entropy of the universe?
I’m guessing it’s harder, but possible in a very very small-scale way?
Plant an acorn?
- Find the knob that controls the universe’s fine structure constant.
- Turn it.
I’m afraid not. The second law of thermodynamics is fairly airtight. Entropy can decrease on a small scale by pure chance, but it’s fundamentally impossible either to predict when such fluctuations will happen or to make them happen deliberately.
Hire Maxwell’s Demon to sort things out for you? 
I’m not really sure what the answer is to that. Since the universe is unbounded (we assume) the normal constraints of thermodynamic entropy don’t really apply. By expanding the universe you are increasing the maximum entropy limit, so you are, I suppose, decreasing thermodynamic entropy relative to that…but you are also accelerating the process of expansion, which brings the universe closer to The Big Rip. It’s also possible that the universe might be multiply connected to itself or to other external spaces, in which case…we don’t know know what to think about that. This gets more into the realm of Dr. Who scriptwriting than serious (ha) cosmology. For all we really know, we could be the teardrop in the eye of some exo-universal little princess who didn’t get a hyperpony for Metacosmas Day. Waa.
It’s not an issue worth spilling your drink over, certainly.
Stranger
Clockwise or counterclockwise?
Hey, I’m doing my best.*
*A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.(John Wayne)
“It’s the blue wire with the white stripe not, repeat, not, the black wire with the yellow stripe.”
Stranger
Hijack: I know Stranger meant this in jest, but I wouldn’t count my future dominant species before they’re decanted. It took half the lifetime of the sun for ONE species intelligent enough to know what a “fossil” is to evolve. And we got really lucky at a number of historical junctures. Given the limited remaining lifetime of the sun, I’d say that there are pretty good odds that we’re the planet’s last chance, intellectually speaking.
And if Chairman Pow manages to use up the remaining entropy budget, I wouldn’t put big odds on the rest of the universe, either.
(with apologies to Asimov)
“There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.”
Thanks for the reply Stranger. I always look forward to your posts.
Good work.
WAG You might try ** World Jump Day 2006 **
I would imagine the most efficient entrophy production humanity can currently do is the conversion of matter into energy. Setting off as many thermonuclear devices as possible would be the best way to increase entrophy.