<font color="yellow"><font face="Comic Sans MS">I confess that I havent the patience to read all 25 pages of this discussion, but I have a pertinent comment or two that might interest you guys. I have partly developed a cosmology of my own, namely the Fractal Foam Model of Universes. Some of my early developments can be found in old threads on this board; if you look them up, be advised that I have abandoned several mistakes since posting them. The crux of my model is: The ether foam of our universe is the cosmic foam of a sub-universe, and the cosmic foam of our universe is the ether foam of a super-universe; these are just three in an infinite scale-wise sequence of universes. This thread is not the place to lay out my whole model; Ill just offer some insights that it suggests to me about the entropy of the universe.
First: Everyone knows the universe is obviously a closed system; everyone but I, apparently. Everyone might be right if theyre talking about a finite universe; but I believe the universe is infinite. The way I see it, a finite portion of an infinite universe cannot be isolated from the rest of the universe, which is infinitely larger. There must be exchange of energy across the artificially defined boundary of that finite portion. Consequently, it cannot be proven that the infinite universe is a closed system; and let us never forget that the 2nd law of thermodynamics is applicable only to that elusive closed system which doesnt exist.
Second: The expansion of space represents an input of new space into our universe, and space has an energy equivalentdark energy that is, but energy nonetheless. I cant put a numerical value on the equivalence between space and energy, but I believe the formula is a slight modification of E=mc^2; m must be replaced by the volume of space times the inertial density of the ether times an unknown scalar constant. Since our universe is constantly receiving new space, it obviously is NOT a closed system. (Note that I am referring to OUR universe, not THE universe. In my model, our universe is everything between the scale of the ether foam and that of the cosmic foam. These two foams are identical in form, though that form must evolve over time, and the foams may not now be at the same point in their evolutions).
Third: For reasons best stated in a separate thread, time in alternate universes runs in alternate directions. Each universe in the infinite scale-wise sequence exports its entropy to the next larger-scale universe, and the inversion of time converts an export of entropy into an import of disentropy. This seems to suggest that the entropy of THE universe should be decreasing. I expect I am missing some mechanism that prevents the overall entropy of THE universe from becoming zero. </font id="Comic Sans MS"></font id="yellow">
