Why did the universe have such low entropy in the past, and time correlates with the universal (but not local) increase in entropy, from the past and to the future, according to the second law of thermodynamics?
Answers
hi friend
Explanation:Just to say, I am not a scientist, and these are my possibly (probably) erroneous thoughts.
I do not think anyone knows ‘why’ there was minimal entropy. It is, perhaps, one of the most important cosmological questions. To say it was ‘in the past’ begs some questions about ‘time’, but is hard to avoid saying.
If you ask ‘why is time correlated with the entropy slope’, you have already assumed it is, which requires examination. The way we define time would presumably mean it is always correlated with processes, and an entropy slope is experienced as a process. However, if you mean that time has a directionality, and that it follows the entropy slope (past to future, low to high entropy) that also requires clarification.
An ordered state will always tend towards greater disorder, almost by the definition of ‘ordered’. But we do not know that the natural state of our Universe is ordered. According to the laws of physics as we understand them, the most likely state of our Universe is close to maximum disorder. If and when the Universe reaches that state, entropy will be expected to fluctuate randomly between close to maximum and a lesser value. Time as we define it, will not have a ‘direction’ correlated with each fluctuation of the entropy value, so logically it cannot have one now.
Either time does not have a direction; or it does, but it is uncorrelated with entropy; or if it does and seems to be correlated, that is contingent (coincident on whatever unknown circumstance produced low entropy in what we call ‘the past’), however it may appear to us.