The most puzzling aspect of this Universe is not quarks and Quantum
Chromodynamics. It is not the seemingly secure force of gravity, a force I
can even feel. Instead it is ineffable Time. However illogical and
unphysical, I cannot escape the feeling that Time is somehow intimately
related to ghostly Entropy.
Consider Time as a sort of Willy Wonka machine. It makes things from
timeless space-stuff. It divides the Universe into the timeless and the
timed. The timeless space-stuff is fed into the Time machine, which
mangles it and crunches it and churns it until it becomes a three
dimensional ribbon. Then this ribbon is molded and stamped and cut, coming
out as things we experience NOW. The Time Machine transforms formless
space into houses, cars, bread, wine, and ourselves. Time is the mechanism
by which the Universe becomes perfectly material.
Once something plops out of the Time Machine, NOW, Entropy takes over.
Things degenerate. They lose their exactness, their form, and wear out.
Eventually everything turns into little particles of dust, then into a
gooey slush, and finally into "frozen" energy. As the temperature (energy)
decreases, things just disappear into nothingness.
So, the appearance of space-things is a temporary phenomenon. It is their
temporariness which is time. The Time Machine produces food for Entropy.
The one thing at which Entropy is 100% efficient is digesting everything
into nothing at all, but it takes an "infinite" amount of time to do it.
Of course, that infinity is only apparent to three-dimensional creatures,
because in another space the infinite is finite.
In my
metaphysical dream, Time and Entropy are the "forces" of the pendulum,
potential and kinetic, swinging back and forth, making and destroying
Universes.
14:12:43 - Tuesday, 01/17/2006