Ed Gerck

Thermodynamics and Physical Reality Ed Gerck

Did you ever wonder how the rainbow ends? A set of macro-world processes that "always win" in the limit, would not be possible at first sight in thermodynamics, but are shown here, using Shannon's Information Theory. We also discuss Shannon's unicity in Appendix A, using concepts of thermodynamics, as the amount of entropy, as disorder, that can be added to a text by enciphering it. The maximum of added disorder depends on the entropy of the keys used in the encipherment, and is also limited by possible order in the message itself, introducing the concepts of Open Keys and Unknown Keys. This is also of importance to the issue of the arrow of time. It shows that the second law of thermodynamics can be circumvented, while the first law cannot. We suggest that Nature may superficially look chaotic but does seem to act in a non-random way, where we investigate physical reality as may be seen through diverse pathways linked to thermodynamic interpretations, including by Caratheodory. The behavior of the dynamical laws, governing micro and leading to their macro, is also discussed.