Oh my gosh, guys, let me tell you about entropy! It’s all about disorder and randomness in a system. Literally anything can be a system, even a little balloon filled with air. And get this, we measure entropy in Joules/Kelvin. It’s super useful in thermodynamics because it helps us figure out if a process will happen on its own, without any outside help. We call that a spontaneous process. And guess what? All spontaneous processes actually increase the overall disorder of a system and its surroundings. It’s like a law of thermodynamics or something. There are always more disordered states than ordered ones, so disorder is just a natural thing that happens.
But wait, it gets even cooler! According to physics, entropy is what gives time its forward direction. As time goes on, the entropy of the universe always increases. That’s why we can’t go back in time, because it would actually decrease the entropy of the universe, and that’s a big no-no according to the second law of thermodynamics.
Now, in the song “Entropy,” Greg sings this line about slow decay orchestrated by Boltzmann. So who’s this Boltzmann guy? Well, he was a physicist from Austria, and he had this idea that the entropy of a state is related to how many different ways that state can be achieved. If there are lots of ways to achieve a state, it has higher entropy. It’s like a measure of “positional disorder.” And he even came up with an equation to calculate entropy: S = k ln W. S is the entropy in Joules/Kelvin, W is the number of ways to achieve the state, and k is Boltzmann’s constant, which is 1.38 e-23 J/K (rounded).
So here’s the deal: the second law of thermodynamics tells us that all processes increase the disorder (entropy) of the universe. The entropy of the universe can never decrease. So when Greg sings about slow decay orchestrated by Boltzmann, he’s basically saying that over time, the order in the universe is slowly but surely disappearing. Eventually, everything will be in complete disorder. The universe won’t reach equilibrium until that happens. And unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s just the way things are, not a human issue.
Isn’t entropy mind-blowing? It’s like the universe’s natural tendency towards chaos and disorder.
This content was originally written by the badass contributors of thebrpage.net, the best superfan resource and website that exists for any band, let alone the best band in the whole entire world. I’ve been lurking on that site for over 20 years and if you’re into Bad Religion as much as I am, I’m sure you’re familiar. If you are not, go there right now and never come back to this site again. You should, and I totally understand.
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