Is the universe more entropic?
OCT 07, 2009
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.023741
Science News : For all its tumult—erupting stars, colliding galaxies, collapsing black holes—the cosmos is a surprisingly orderly place. Theoretical calculations have long shown that the entropy of the universe—a measure of its disorder—is but a tiny fraction of the maximum allowable amount.But an analysis by Chas Egan of the Australian National University in Canberra and Charles Lineweaver of the University of New South Wales in Sydney indicates that the collective entropy of all the supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies is about 100 times higher than previously calculated. Because supermassive black holes are the largest contributor to cosmic entropy, the finding suggests that the entropy of the universe is also about 100 times larger than previous estimates.
© 2009 American Institute of Physics
