This occuring spontaneously would indeed violate the 2nd law.
It’s not spontaneous…
It’s happening in cba order rather abc.
Conservation of energy mate, whether it’s energy or mass, it’s not going anywhere.
So in a contained universe, it doesn’t matter if it’s an apple releasing energy and becoming a pile of ash, or a pile of ash absorbing energy and becoming a perfectly normal apple.
The net energy is still conserved. Just going from energy to mass unlike mass to energy.
Like, think of it as a seed becoming a tree. Mass is being “created” from energy.
But the laws of thermodynamics as were used to them are predicated on a linear one direction passage of time, because humans are the ones who explained it, and that’s the only reality our conscious minds can comprehend
If what I’m saying doesn’t make sense, it’s because this is ridiculously complicated. Any flaws are because of me trying to explain it which is why I said if someone wants to understand more, they’re going to have to spend a lot of time really some really heavy scientific literature.
I feel it also warrants stating that Penrose’s theory is not widely accepted, has yet to be tested, and is based mostly on an argument to elegance - it “seems weird” for their to be uncountably infinite parallel timelines spawning at every instant. It is far too soon for it to be taken as fact.
You’re talking more about Penroses further hypothesis that consciousness is because of quantum collapse inside of the brain. That is where challenges arise.
But Penrose is smart enough to say he doesn’t know everything, and he has spent decades talking about this stuff in the scientific community because he wants it challenged. That’s kind of how science works…
TheChurn@kbin.social 8 months ago
Spontaneity in thermodynamics refers to a process which occurs without external application of energy. In your description, a pile of ash becoming an apple is spontaneous.
There is no mass-energy conversion in an apple burning to become ash, just the release of chemical energy from newly-formed bonds.
Regardless, conservation of energy is only one part of how the universe operates. The second operating principle is (or at least from hundreds of years of scientific inquiry appears to be) the maximization of entropy. That is the 'spreading out' of available energy. This is the reason iron rusts, rather than remaining oxygen and iron - conservation of energy alone cannot explain natural phenomena.
Spontaneous reconstruction of an ashed apple violates the second law of thermodynamics, and the Second law is no less valid than the First.
Lastly, I was not writing specifically about Penrose's views on consciousness. His entire theory that gravity is driving the collapse of a wave function, and that said collapse occurs retroactively, is untested and based on an appeal to elegance. This does not make it wrong, but it most certainly should not be taken as true.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Because what is acting on it is the energy that turns back into matter…
Look, I’m not going to argue this. Feel free to start reading about it on your own, and good luck.