Steven Frautschi
(1933-)
Steven Frautschi is Professor Emeritus of physics at Cal Tech.
His main work was in high-energy physics and the strong interaction, though it was superceded by quantum chromodynamics in the 1970's.
His importance to information philosophy is his 1982 paper in Science,
Entropy in an Expanding Universe.
In his paper summary, Frautschi writes...
The question of how the observed evolution of organized structures from
initial chaos in the expanding universe can be reconciled with the laws of statistical
mechanics is studied, with emphasis on effects of the expansion and gravity. Some
major sources of entropy increase are listed. An expanding "causal" region is defined
in which the entropy, though increasing, tends to fall further and further behind its
maximum possible value, thus allowing for the development of order.
Frautschi's main conclusion is buried on page 3 of his 7-page paper, which refers in a footnote to the scientist who originated this view -
David Layzer, the Harvard cosmologist Frautschi may have met in his Harvard undergraduate years (the early 1950's)?
right from the beginning
at 10-43 second, and certainly later at
times when the physics is better understood, gravitational entropy in a causal
region fails to keep pace with its maximum potential value.
We have thus come to a conclusion
which stands the closed 19th-century
model on its head. Far from approaching
equilibrium, the expanding universe as
viewed in a succession of causal regions
falls further and further behind achieving
equilibrium. This gives ample scope for
interesting nonequilibrium structures to
develop out of initial chaos (15), as has
occurred in nature.
Frautschi's reference 15 is to Layzer's landmark Science paper on the
Arrow of Time in 1975.
Steven Frautschi was on
Stephen Wolfram's Ph.D. thesis committee at Cal Tech.
References
Evolution as Entropy, Brooks, D.R., and E.O.Wiley, 2nd. Ed., 1988. pp.36-46.
Normal |
Teacher |
Scholar
|
|
|
