Metadata
- Author: Stephen Hawking
- Full Title:: A Brief History of Time: From Big Bang to Black Holes
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- URL:: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/39437359
- Finished date:: 2023-12-06
Highlights
An intact cup on the table is a state of high order, but a broken cup on the floor is a disordered state.
The explanation that is usually given as to why we don’t see broken cups gathering themselves together off the floor and jumping back onto the table is that it is forbidden by the second law of thermodynamics. This says that in any closed system disorder, or entropy, always increases with time. In other words, it is a form of Murphy’s law: things always tend to go wrong! (View Highlight)
The increase of disorder or entropy with time is one example of what is called an arrow of time, something that distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time. (View Highlight)
O como la frase de Anna Karenina, de que todas las familias infelices son infelices de distintos modos.
The second law of thermodynamics results from the fact that there are always many more disordered states than there are ordered ones. For example, consider the pieces of a jigsaw in a box. There is one, and only one, arrangement in which the pieces make a complete picture. On the other hand, there are a very large number of arrangements in which the pieces are disordered and don’t make a picture. (View Highlight)