can entropy be reversed

12 days later

Using energy you can "easily" revert entropy. Yet, technically, on the limit, if the universe is a closed system, energy would end and then you wouldn't be able to revert it anymore.
That's a huge if, tho. My 2 cents is that it isn't.

20 days later

As n00b in the physics department I would say "no".
Entropy can be postponed if need be by using different forms of energy but it cannot be "reversed" as you say.

2 months later
2 months later

Ultimately, no. But it's going to take billions of years until that even matters and none of us, nor any of our offsprings or humanity in general will be around by that point so for our purpose it doesn't matter.

24 days later

from a computational viewpoint, there's already such a thing called reversible computing whose main purpose is to realize an isentropic -a process without any increase\decrease of entropy- form of computing. while it's still only theoretical, it's indeed a promising tech development to push further the boundaries of computing by avoiding thermal waste\improving power consumption arbitrarily. basically, our current architectures generate entropy according to the landauer's principle that states that information erasure must always incur in thermodynamic entropy : take for instance the AND gate, it takes two inputs and it has only one output, so that this compression of information causes heat dissipation. my understanding is that reversible computing circumvents this problem by using circuits that keep the number of inputs equal to the number of outputs in order to avoid any erasure of information, so basically a gate is reversible as long as its boolean function is bijective, but this is often times achieved by adding garbage outputs during the computation process - and in fact one of the main challenges of that field is to minimize as much as possible the amount of garbage bits-

5 months later

as the link states, you can't turn ash and smoke back into a tree.
you cannot reverse entropy.

Infamia wrote

as the link states, you can't turn ash and smoke back into a tree.

Technically you can. Smoke and ash are mostly carbon, which plants then use to grow themselves.

malmon wrote
Infamia wrote

as the link states, you can't turn ash and smoke back into a tree.

Technically you can. Smoke and ash are mostly carbon, which plants then use to grow themselves.

Technically you can

you can reverse the process of entropy which leaves smoke & ash as a remainder to the entropy.

i didn't say you couldn't regrow or use the materials to thus grow something.
i said you can't reverse the entropy process.

yk:

< set fire to tree inside controlled chamber
< capture smoke
< capture ash/charcoal

ok now rebuild me that exact tree and have it actually sustain itself.

good luck

(note of possible confusion: you using the materials on something completely different isn't the same as what i'm referring to as 'reversing the entropy process', i mean using the materials you have only)

Infamia wrote
malmon wrote
Infamia wrote

as the link states, you can't turn ash and smoke back into a tree.

Technically you can. Smoke and ash are mostly carbon, which plants then use to grow themselves.

Technically you can

you can reverse the process of entropy which leaves smoke & ash as a remainder to the entropy.

i didn't say you couldn't regrow or use the materials to thus grow something.
i said you can't reverse the entropy process.

yk:

< set fire to tree inside controlled chamber
< capture smoke
< capture ash/charcoal

ok now rebuild me that exact tree and have it actually sustain itself.

good luck

(note of possible confusion: you using the materials on something completely different isn't the same as what i'm referring to as 'reversing the entropy process', i mean using the materials you have only)

Yes, you are right. The point is that in order to make another tree out of the burnt remains of an old one, you'd need to use more energy.

malmon wrote
Infamia wrote
malmon wrote
Infamia wrote

as the link states, you can't turn ash and smoke back into a tree.

Technically you can. Smoke and ash are mostly carbon, which plants then use to grow themselves.

Technically you can

you can reverse the process of entropy which leaves smoke & ash as a remainder to the entropy.

i didn't say you couldn't regrow or use the materials to thus grow something.
i said you can't reverse the entropy process.

yk:

< set fire to tree inside controlled chamber
< capture smoke
< capture ash/charcoal

ok now rebuild me that exact tree and have it actually sustain itself.

good luck

(note of possible confusion: you using the materials on something completely different isn't the same as what i'm referring to as 'reversing the entropy process', i mean using the materials you have only)

Yes, you are right. The point is that in order to make another tree out of the burnt remains of an old one, you'd need to use more energy.

entropy defines the statistical possibility of equality that molecules are ordered or disordered based on a macrostate, the microstates have a higher entropy as the size of the system increases and it is also based on whether the system per se is isolated or not able to be influenced by outer systems.

reversing entropy can be done on a larger scale (e.g. billiard ball example) but on the smaller and more minute scale it is provably incorrect.

You can't turn the carbon, calcium, and other stuff back into a person. In the same vein, you can't turn smoke and ash back into a tree.

perhaps this addition from here will help you better understand.

3 months later

Our actions in this vast universe are not sufficient in scale to reverse it at all. If I take say, a large empty plate and drop it on the ground, I create entropy the instant it shatters, and trying to pick up all the pieces back together, my actions only further contribute to even more entropy.

The current and only universe we live in at present will continue to expand proportional in all three axes in a forward motion from the origin until it reaches an infinite enough size that our calculators will force to give out errors, and when all the matter finally stops moving, the universe then comes to a silent standstill. If you factor in the dark energy and dark matter, it can accelerate the inevitable demise at a speed we can't easily measure but still take trillions of years to get there.

Therefore, this means there is no such thing as reversing entropy in itself, period.

a year later
10 months later

I'm a layperson, but I think this is accurate.
If you allow energy into the system, you can use that energy to rearrange the system into a lower entropy state. See: Negative Temperature
In a theoretical closed system, where there is no energy that can be created or removed, just mixed, then no. There's a non-zero chance the entropy will go down from some point in time to another point in time, but given an indefinite amount of time, the entropy will max out.