![]() ![]() ![]() Unfortunately, the part about everything running down looks like it does happen. Entropy in a closed system can never ever decrease. So the part about light slowing down turns out not to happen. And the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that it will never decrease. If the speed of light has changed over time (which is not what most physicists think) the reason would not be the Second Law, at least not directly. The laws of probability allow a closed systems entropy to decrease, but with such a low likelihood that the odds would make it very unlikely. Entropy is one of the fundamental forces of our universe. However, this sort of process can’t make a beam of light go slower- it doesn’t change the particular laws governing individual little particles. I am not a physicist so I don't know for sure how that plays into entropy calculations but think it is considered a spontaneous increase in entropy. There are a lot more ways for that energy to make billions of little atoms move around than there are ways to make two big things move as blocks, so entropy has increased. Yes, it's mathematically possible but you will never see it in your lifetime, or anyone else's, or even the universe's lifetime. (Friction is the name for the forces which make them do this.) The extra energy goes into all sorts of tiny little wigglings of atoms in the materials. If you have two big things that are moving at different velocities, they can dump some of their kinetic energy by coming to some average speed. There’s a reason why people say that means things slow down. So in our example the thing that’s like entropy naturally increases. Entropy is a way of keeping track of how many arrangements things might have- there’s lots of ways of getting half heads and half tails, but only one way to get all heads. That means something like that everything gets more jumbled up, like when you shake up a batch of coins that were all heads and end up with an unpredictable mess of about half heads and half tails. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that the total entropy of everything always increases. That's a really great question, because you've stopped to wonder if two things you've heard really fit together. ![]()
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