Telmo Menezes wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 2:37 PM, Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>> Are you saying that the second law is verified in each of all
>> "branches" of the (quantum) multiverse?
>>
>
> I'm not saying that.
>
>
>> I would say the second law is
>> statistical, and is verified in most branches. In the MWI applied to
>> quantum field it seems to me that there can be branches with an
>> arbitrarily high number of photon creation without annihilation, and
>> this for each period of time.
>>
I'm not sure what source of photon creation you have in mind, but QFT
doesn't allow violation of energy conservation.
>
> Yes, I would tend to agree with that, although I can't say I'm 100%
> convinced. Anyway I'm a relative newcomer to this list so I don't feel
> I have an informed opinion yet. Need to catch up with all the
> arguments. Also have a thesis to finish, which tends to get in the way
> :)
>
> I'm just arguing that the experiment with the rifle and the geiger
> counter does not imply any second law anomaly. Yes, you are "forcing"
> your consciousness to "move" to states where the atom never decays,
> but if you consider the larger system, entropy is increasing as normal
> because of the preparation and maintenance of the apparatus needed for
> the experiment.
>
> Do you think this makes sense?
>
> Telmo Menezes.
>
The idea of the multiverse derives from quantum mechanics, e.g. the
Everett no-collapse interpretation. But in that model the (microscopic)
entropy never increases (or decreases), because QM evolution is unitary.
It is only the coarse-grained entropy, i.e. restricted to this branch,
that increases. Certainly within this branch you are correct that the
entropy increase due to firing a gun is very much greater than the
decrease due to an atom not decaying.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Thu Apr 17 2008 - 14:22:08 PDT