Why do things fall out of order instead of into order??

Question

I know it sounds like a silly question...
but Stephen Hawking posed this question in one of
his lectures and it reallys stuck with me when I
heard it.

Why do things in the Universe fall OUT of order
why don't they fall INTO order? Does it have
to do with the space time continuum?

Answer 1

Entropy -- the second law of thermodynamics.

This law states that in the absence of other forces, any system becomes less orderly over time. This is because of the way energy can be converted to different forms but not lost -- most energy that gets used for work transforms into heat, which radiates into space and can't be used to do useful work ever again. In other words, energy gets used up, and with no more energy input things fall apart into entropy, or complete disorder.

BUT -- the key there is "in the absence of other forces." We, for example, on earth have our sun which continuously supplies energy to us with which useful work can be done. As long as there is an external supply of energy, entropy can be avoided. Once our sun burns out, however, our solar system is indeed doomed to entropy.

Answer 2

It has to do with a thing called entropy - the tendency toward disorder. The common example is if you start with an open bottle of perfume and it evaporates, the perfume molecules will fill the room. There is basically zero probability that once the perfume evaporates that all the molecules will wind up in the bottle again at the same time. It's just the way things work in nature.

Answer 3

I don't think that's completely true. Things tend to fall to low energy states. That may be choatic -- the pile of CDs in your living room floor falling over and speading themselves all over the place, or ordered -- the atoms of water in a snowflake, or atoms of sodium and chlorine in a salt crystal.

Much of the sorting into either order or chaos can be understood by looking at energies involved in a situation -- things tend to find the lowest energy situation.

Some can be understood by looking at randomness. If I arrange a set of squares into a grid, but don't do it perfectly -- some are skewed, some are lightly offline then make small random changes, there are many more changes that I can make that will move the squares off line than thanges I can make that will move them closer to a correct position in the grid.

Answer 4

Say you have ten block numbered 0 to 9. If you drop them and look at the order of the numbers they will probably be out of order.

they will only fall in the correct order once out of 10*9*8*7*6*5*4*3*2 times 3,628,800.

They will be out of order 3,628,799/3,628,800 times.

Answer 5

It's probability. That is, most of the time the state "order" of a system means one, or a few, configuration(s) of a system out thousands upon thousands. Most of the configurations are what we may call "out of order." Hence, if a random process drives a system to some final configuration, it will most likely be "out of order."

Answer 6

My second answer is semantics ("what is order?"), but my first guess is randomness--only a few patterns would appear to be 'order', so such an insignificant number of interactions would lead to order that it is statistically safe to assume that they would naturally lead to disorder.

Answer 7

Good question and doesn't it blow to pieces the idea of the "big bang" therory - how could such chaos put in motion the order of the universe|?

Answer 8

Have you ever had those days where everything seems to go perfect for you. It seems like a lucky day....would that not be "falling into order"

Answer 9

Buckle up for Entropy
It's the Law

Answer 10

Entropy - doh! beat me to it