Gravity wells are happenin' places.
Oct. 15th, 2004 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaOngoing thoughts dealing with subjects related to yesterday's post.
Gravity plays an interesting role in the cosmos. It plays an important role in the development of complexity.
Just as from every vantage point the degree of enfolding increases with distance, so too we find that spacetime curves "up and away" from every gravity well. As mass draws near to mass, the amount of heat and other kinds of energy increases within the gravity well -- to the point where gravity, generally speaking, is balanced against heat. Too little gravity, and heat blows the mass apart; too little heat, and gravity draws the mass together. So what develops is a convection current, a balanced dynamic between heat and gravity. This dynamic creates the potential for complexity to increase -- IOW, this is the engine that drives localized anentropy in the cosmos.
This is true even in the case of black holes, which "evaporate" slowly over time by emitting Hawking radiation. Eventually, a black hole will evaporate to the point where its escape velocity comes under the speed of light, and then no longer is it a black hole. Assuming the universe faces the "heat death" scenario, black holes will be the last thing to succumb to entropy, but eventually they too will fall.
All elements with an atomic number greater than 2 were birthed in gravity wells, or in supernovae brought about when heat overcomes gravity in burned-out stars.
Gravity is the hardest of the types of energy to reconcile with the others, mathematically. It is the last asymmetry to be corrected before we apprehend the grand unity. That makes it, in my mind, a significant participant in the cosmic dance.
Gravity plays an interesting role in the cosmos. It plays an important role in the development of complexity.
Just as from every vantage point the degree of enfolding increases with distance, so too we find that spacetime curves "up and away" from every gravity well. As mass draws near to mass, the amount of heat and other kinds of energy increases within the gravity well -- to the point where gravity, generally speaking, is balanced against heat. Too little gravity, and heat blows the mass apart; too little heat, and gravity draws the mass together. So what develops is a convection current, a balanced dynamic between heat and gravity. This dynamic creates the potential for complexity to increase -- IOW, this is the engine that drives localized anentropy in the cosmos.
This is true even in the case of black holes, which "evaporate" slowly over time by emitting Hawking radiation. Eventually, a black hole will evaporate to the point where its escape velocity comes under the speed of light, and then no longer is it a black hole. Assuming the universe faces the "heat death" scenario, black holes will be the last thing to succumb to entropy, but eventually they too will fall.
All elements with an atomic number greater than 2 were birthed in gravity wells, or in supernovae brought about when heat overcomes gravity in burned-out stars.
Gravity is the hardest of the types of energy to reconcile with the others, mathematically. It is the last asymmetry to be corrected before we apprehend the grand unity. That makes it, in my mind, a significant participant in the cosmic dance.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
YEAH!!!!!!! (: (: (:
no subject
Date: 2004-10-15 10:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-16 12:49 am (UTC)Perhaps you are using the word "complexity" somewhat differently than I am accustomed to--is not increasing complexity an entropical, and not an anentropical, phenomenon?
I've always had a problem with the "dark matter" that must exist as 90% of all universal matter in order for gravitation theories to be true, and we've yet to find any of that stuff.