G.ZEEP@MIT-EECS (08/10/85)
From: Wang Zeep <G.ZEEP%MIT-EECS@MIT-MC.ARPA> I'd hate to give people a long lecture on thermodynamics, but basically, unless you've taken a real thermo+stat. mech. course, you probably aren't aware of the basic limitations of thermodynamics. In a nutshell: Thermodynamics (classical) developed from experiments on systems ranging in size from millions of atoms to (say) the solar system. It's not clear entropy describes anything at sizes larger or smaller than the experimental range, or at extremes of temperature, pressure, etc. Don't bet on "heat death." Thermo just can't be scaled up to universe sized systems. Remember: Thermo is for comparison purposes only, and your entropy may vary. wz -------