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enropy

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JuanKing | 15:19 Sun 28th Aug 2005 | Science
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if entropy is always increasing how come...order and stuff, planets, mice
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firstly, the entropy of a system as a whole is always increasing.

secondly, entropy is a quantum mechanical property. you can't really describe it too well in classical mechanics. planets and everything else macro-scopic behave under classical mechanics, thus entropy isn't really applied.
I don't really get your question. If entropy is always increasing how come what?

Entropy is a pretty hard thing for anybody to understand. And you are right, entropy is always increasing. It's always increasing because in a certain way, entropy is defined by something called a micro-state (in the Quantum Statistical View of the Physical World). Anyway what that means is that if we took every particle, we could desribe it with the knowledge of it's speed, momenta, energy, position, spin state etc. These are it's microstates. Entropy is defined as K*ln(number of microstates). Since your probably not a phyicist, i won't dwell too much on what this means or where your going to use it. Sufficed to say, whatever you do in your life, the simple act of living is increasing the entropy in our universe. You breathe, you change the position of oxygen which cascades by changing the position of any other molecules close by. Snowball. So the number of microstates is always increasing. What this all means beats me, live life now and enjoy it. We're all heading to a chaotic and undisordered end! But not for a few trillion years - i think?
The total entropy of the Universe is always increasing. This does not mean that small local decreases cannot take place..
an analogy can be made with wealth.

as gef says, the entropy of the whole system is always increasing (i.e. the universe). but this doesnt mean small areas of space can have entropy that stays small.

much like wealth in this world. you will find that the wealth of all the countries in the world is slowly increasing, probably (i'm no financial expert). but you can also accept that most of that wealth is in other areas, and there are still plenty of people in this world that are poor.
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these are great answers, thanking you for taking time to share your knowledge

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