[Malamute Lover (OP)]

The laws of physics are time symmetric

Not all of them, for example, there's the 2nd law of thermodynamics

SLOT is heuristically derived. We see it happening. It does not derive from any other laws, all of which are time symmetric. The question is WHY SLOT is asymmetric. Merely saying that it is does not answer that question.

[Malamute Lover (OP)]

Why is it that the hot coffee gets cooler instead of hotter or just staying the same?

The coffee does get hotter, if it's placed in hotter environment. Or near a strong microwave transmitter.

Exactly. How did the coffee get hot in the first place? It did not come out of the Big Bang that way. Energy was supplied to heat it up. Where did that energy come from? Ultimately from the sun for most power sources - natural gas, coal, oil etc. - or from supernovae if the source was nuclear. Stars did not come out of the Big Bang either.

Why are there pockets of low entropy this long after the Big Bang? Because all of them ultimately depend on gravity being time asymmetric, i,e., always being 'down'. This is how stars form and start nuclear fusion, And that fact about gravity is due to all mass-energy, which is what creates gravity, is always positive. That is my proposed answer.

[puppypower]

The fish clock does not work very well. The rate of flow of time is too variable based on external factors. Leave it on the table in the summer and the clock runs fast. Put it in the refrigerator and it runs slower. Even slower in the freezer.  Cook it and can it and later make a tuna sandwich and it can even result in lower entropy in someone’s body. SLOT as a timekeeper does not work because it is statistical and subject to local variations. It is not universal as time is.

Mass via General Relativity cause clocks and time to slow down or speed up based on how much mass the reference has. The fish clock does this with heat, while a regular clock does this with mass and GR.

In both cases, the arrow of time always moves forward, but at differing rates based on mass or thermal energy and the type of clock one uses. Mass and gravity slows the rate at which time moves forward but does it not control the forward movement. A black hole may almost stop time for all practical purposes, but time still moves forward. Time is driven by entropy and the creation of limbo energy. The constant loss of useable energy from the universe does not allow time to cycle like a wave.

Consider this scenario. We have two factories that each make widgets. Both factories are identical and each makes 1 defect per thousand widgets. The defect is connected to entropy. We throw these away defects, since it takes too much energy to reverse the defects entropy increase. it can be done but it is not cost effective. 

I will take one factory and place it on a massive planet so its clock time slows due to GR. The other factory will be moved to a reference where time speeds up. In a side by side comparison, from a neutral reference, the factory with the faster time reference will make more defects per unit of third reference time. Less mass allows for more entropy to be expressed compared to extra mass. The expansion of the universe is increasing the rate of entropy; tim speeds up, to make up for the slowing and reversal of entropy by gravity and mass.

Since gravity is a force, when it lowers potential, it should give off energy. This is based on energy conservation. When gravity reverses entropy, that also gives off energy. The reversal of entropy  puts limbo energy back into play, locally. While the exothermic output from gravity, apart from entropy increases entropy elsewhere; expansion. Cold appears in the expansion due to limbo energy creation.

Entropy and limbo energy is useful to life and enzyme catalysis. Rather than push a reaction up an energy hill, entropy create a type of energy vacuum, that pulls the reactants up the hill in hopes of getting its energy in the future. Normally, we add energy to push things up and over the energy hill, but entropy can be used to pull things up the hill, so in the future, the energy release becomes available for entropy. Cause and affect can appear to be reversed in time.

As an easier to see example, say we expand a Nobel gas like Helium, so we can treat it as an ideal gas. We start with a compressed cylinder of gas at 20,000 PSI and open the valve. The gas and cylinder will get very cold as the gas expands due to the entropy increase. The increasing entropy is sucking up the local thermal energy. It can get so cold, nearby, we start to feel the air puling heat from out of our bodies. Entropic catalysis works this way. The creation of limbo energy makes this change unable to reverse. There is no extra heat left to balance this off, so equilibrium  will try to find it from secondary sources nearby.
 

[Bored chemist]

The laws of physics are time symmetric

Not all of them, for example, there's the 2nd law of thermodynamics

SLOT is heuristically derived. We see it happening. It does not derive from any other laws, all of which are time symmetric. The question is WHY SLOT is asymmetric. Merely saying that it is does not answer that question.

We derived our laws of physics from experimental observations.
We observed that dropped eggs don't hop back up onto tables and rebuild themselves.
And thus it is the behaviour of the universe that drives the definition of our "laws".

If time didn't flow as it does, the 2nd law wouldn't exist as it does.

The universe generates the rules, not the other way round.

[Bored chemist]

Consider this scenario. We have two factories that each make widgets. Both factories are identical and each makes 1 defect per thousand widgets. The defect is connected to entropy. We throw these away defects, since it takes too much energy to reverse the defects entropy increase. it can be done but it is not cost effective. 

I will take one factory and place it on a massive planet so its clock time slows due to GR. The other factory will be moved to a reference where time speeds up. In a side by side comparison, from a neutral reference, the factory with the faster time reference will make more defects per unit of third reference time. Less mass allows for more entropy to be expressed compared to extra mass. The expansion of the universe is increasing the rate of entropy; tim speeds up, to make up for the slowing and reversal of entropy by gravity and mass.

The entropy associated with "1 fault in 1000" is not rate dependent.
So your example makes no sense.

Since gravity is a force

Not really, it's a field.

Since gravity is a force, when it lowers potential, it should give off energy.

Even if gravity was a force there's no reason for it to give off energy
If I put a rubber band round a rock the band exerts a force on the rock (and vice versa) but it doesn't give off energy.

As an easier to see example, say we expand a Nobel gas like Helium, so we can treat it as an ideal gas. We start with a compressed cylinder of gas at 20,000 PSI and open the valve. The gas and cylinder will get very cold as the gas expands due to the entropy increase.

The word is "noble"
The effect is nothing to do with helium being a noble gas.
And, most importantly, you are simply wrong.

Helium is one of the few gases (at normal temperatures) which gets hot when it expands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule%E2%80%93Thomson_effect

You really don't know what you are talking about; why not stop?

[Malamute Lover (OP)]

The laws of physics are time symmetric

Not all of them, for example, there's the 2nd law of thermodynamics

SLOT is heuristically derived. We see it happening. It does not derive from any other laws, all of which are time symmetric. The question is WHY SLOT is asymmetric. Merely saying that it is does not answer that question.

We derived our laws of physics from experimental observations.
We observed that dropped eggs don't hop back up onto tables and rebuild themselves.
And thus it is the behaviour of the universe that drives the definition of our "laws".

If time didn't flow as it does, the 2nd law wouldn't exist as it does.

The universe generates the rules, not the other way round.

What is the cause of this unidirectional flow of time? All laws of physics, except SLOT, are symmetric in time. But they exist in this same supposed unidirectional flow of time. Why aren't they time asymmetric like SLOT? Also, entropy can decrease locally. We would not be here if that were not the case. Does that mean that time can flow backwards locally?

Obviously it is not as simple as that.

[Malamute Lover (OP)]

The fish clock does not work very well. The rate of flow of time is too variable based on external factors. Leave it on the table in the summer and the clock runs fast. Put it in the refrigerator and it runs slower. Even slower in the freezer.  Cook it and can it and later make a tuna sandwich and it can even result in lower entropy in someone’s body. SLOT as a timekeeper does not work because it is statistical and subject to local variations. It is not universal as time is.

Mass via General Relativity cause clocks and time to slow down or speed up based on how much mass the reference has. The fish clock does this with heat, while a regular clock does this with mass and GR.

In both cases, the arrow of time always moves forward, but at differing rates based on mass or thermal energy and the type of clock one uses. Mass and gravity slows the rate at which time moves forward but does it not control the forward movement. A black hole may almost stop time for all practical purposes, but time still moves forward. Time is driven by entropy and the creation of limbo energy. The constant loss of useable energy from the universe does not allow time to cycle like a wave.

Time is not driven by entropy. If entropy is decreased locally – and if it were not there would be no eggs to break – does that mean that time flowed backward? Does that mean that when entropy increases quickly, time flows faster? If you heat up a cup of coffee and drop an egg at the same time, what is happening to time? Is it going backward in the coffee pot? If you held onto the egg, would time not flow as fast?

Consider this scenario. We have two factories that each make widgets. Both factories are identical and each makes 1 defect per thousand widgets. The defect is connected to entropy. We throw these away defects, since it takes too much energy to reverse the defects entropy increase. it can be done but it is not cost effective. 

I will take one factory and place it on a massive planet so its clock time slows due to GR. The other factory will be moved to a reference where time speeds up. In a side by side comparison, from a neutral reference, the factory with the faster time reference will make more defects per unit of third reference time. Less mass allows for more entropy to be expressed compared to extra mass. The expansion of the universe is increasing the rate of entropy; tim speeds up, to make up for the slowing and reversal of entropy by gravity and mass.

The entropy level would be the same in the output of the two factories, one defect per 1000 units. Entropy is relative, not absolute. It is not a thing, only a measure.

Consider this scenario. A gas cloud in space that has been hanging around for millions of years gets nudged by starlight in such a way that it begins to collapse into a compact mass, due to gravity. As the gas cloud collapses, the local gravitational field gets stronger and time slows, as per GR. Eventually, because of the increased temperature and density, it starts fusing hydrogen into helium liberating lots of energy. The star gets hotter and heats up anything else nearby.  There has been a local reduction in entropy. But because energy that was previously locked up in atomic binding forces is now being flung out into the universe, global entropy increases. 

Gravity resulted in decreased local entropy and increased global entropy. The rate of time flow does not seem to have had much to do with anything.

Since gravity is a force, when it lowers potential, it should give off energy. This is based on energy conservation. When gravity reverses entropy, that also gives off energy. The reversal of entropy puts limbo energy back into play, locally. While the exothermic output from gravity, apart from entropy increases entropy elsewhere; expansion. Cold appears in the expansion due to limbo energy creation.

When potential energy becomes kinetic energy in a gravitational field, e.g., when a rock is dropped, the addition of positive energy to the rock is compensated by the addition of negative energy to the gravitational field. Recall that a gravitational field has negative energy, it ‘pulls’ instead of ‘pushing’. The plus energy applied to the rock is balanced by the minus energy added to the gravitational field, making it more negative and therefore stronger.

Why should the gravitational field get stronger and pull more? Because the mass of the rock is now closer to the center of the earth. The mass-energy density is a little higher, the gravitational gradient is a little steeper. The gravitation of the rock, by it being closer to the earth, is pulling the earth a little stronger and vice versa.

In General Relativity, this is expressed as the rock following a geodesic in curved spacetime. (A geodesic is the shortest distance between two points on a curved surface.) Some of going forward in time has been bent into going down into the gravity well.

Gravity does not itself reverse entropy. In the case of stars, the existence of gravity allows stored energy to be released. The high density and temperature at the core of a star make hydrogen undergo fusion into helium, which has less binging energy. The liberated energy is what makes the star shine, that is, send energy into the universe. But for most stars, there will come a time when there is not enough hydrogen left in the core to sustain fusion. The core is mostly helium, which has a greater mass than hydrogen. The local gravitational gradient in the core is higher than ever but there is no ‘fuel’ left to be ‘burned’. It is not gravity that caused the local entropy to decrease as much as it did.  Gravity was only the trigger. Without the excess binding energy tied up in hydrogen, stars would not shine as they do.

It is true that as the gas particles from which a star was formed will convert potential energy into kinetic energy when they hit the ‘bottom’ and the star being formed gets quite hot as a result. But if there were no fusion process, once the in-fall ceased or got too light to notice, no more heat would be generated and the star will cool over time.  All the energy sources that heat our coffee or get eggs formed and bring SLOT to our attention are due not to gravity alone, but to what gravity can cause to happen, nuclear fusion in stars.

Entropy and limbo energy is useful to life and enzyme catalysis. Rather than push a reaction up an energy hill, entropy create a type of energy vacuum, that pulls the reactants up the hill in hopes of getting its energy in the future. Normally, we add energy to push things up and over the energy hill, but entropy can be used to pull things up the hill, so in the future, the energy release becomes available for entropy. Cause and affect can appear to be reversed in time.

By entropy I presume you mean entropy increase. The term itself merely refers to a current value, not a direction over time. It is the fact that an external source, mainly the Sun, has provided useable energy that life can function. An entropy increase does not push a reaction up a hill. An entropy increase would mean less energy available for use and the reaction would slide down the hill.

As an easier to see example, say we expand a Nobel gas like Helium, so we can treat it as an ideal gas. We start with a compressed cylinder of gas at 20,000 PSI and open the valve. The gas and cylinder will get very cold as the gas expands due to the entropy increase. The increasing entropy is sucking up the local thermal energy. It can get so cold, nearby, we start to feel the air puling heat from out of our bodies. Entropic catalysis works this way. The creation of limbo energy makes this change unable to reverse. There is no extra heat left to balance this off, so equilibrium  will try to find it from secondary sources nearby.

When I was a kid, we used to buy little metal bottles containing pressurized CO2. There were little cars and boats that you could mount them in. There was a tool that would puncture the soft metal seal at one end, allowing the pressurized gas to escape and push the little car or boat at a pretty good clip.  Touch the spent bottle and it would be cold like it had been in the refrigerator.

Why? A gas in thermal equilibrium in a container consists of particles bouncing around all sorts of ways, some fast, some medium speed, some slow. They are constantly exchanging energy. Temperature is the average kinetic energy of the particles, but it says nothing about any individual particle.

When a little opening is made in the CO2 bottle, the particles that are moving fastest are typically the ones that will find their way out first. The average kinetic energy of the particles drops fast.  The temperature drops.

If instead of a small opening, a very large opening was made, just about all of the pressurized CO2 would come out at once. There would be much less differential selection of particle escape times based on speed. There would be much less temperature change in the container because it would have been exposed to the cold gas for much less time.

The difference in the resulting temperatures of the container in these two scenarios is due to exploiting the kinetic energy (temperature) differences between the different gas particles by controlling the size of the escape hole. In the case of the CO2 bottle with a small puncture as per normal use, the gas that comes out at the beginning is rather warm, as I know from personal experience.  Standing near a large container of pressurized gas exiting through a small valve would feel cold. Try standing in front of the valve and tell me how it feels at the start.

[puppypower]

Time is not driven by entropy. If entropy is decreased locally – and if it were not there would be no eggs to break – does that mean that time flowed backward? Does that mean that when entropy increases quickly, time flows faster? If you heat up a cup of coffee and drop an egg at the same time, what is happening to time? Is it going backward in the coffee pot? If you held onto the egg, would time not flow as fast?

If you consider mass and gravity, which can lower entropy, locally, mass causes time to slow; GR. Along with time slowing this is also where entropy is decreasing due to pressure. However, since there is no such thing as perpetual motion, the lowering entropy will create some new entropy; not 100% efficient, therefore, time continues to propagate, albeit slower, to the future. This is based on regular clocks.

With the entropy clock; dead fish clock, time is dependent on temperature. In this case, cold decreases the energy that is available for entropy. This will make the time cycle of the dead fish get longer; refrigeration, so time appears to slow. Time is based on the relative behavior of clocks, whereas entropy is a physical thing that can alter the energy balance. 

The entropy level would be the same in the output of the two factories, one defect per 1000 units. Entropy is relative, not absolute. It is not a thing, only a measure.

Like in the twin paradox, one twin factory is aging faster. Part of that faster aging involves entropy, which is being expressed as more defects per unit of time in the middle reference. Where space-time is more open and time is moving faster, entropy (twin) will propagate faster. The expansion of the universe more than compensates for the lowering of entropy caused by gravity, so the second law remains in affect.

What this used to bring to mind was an affect similar to an expanding gas affect. Picture if we had a cylinder of compressed water, heated above ts critical point. Water above its critical point is a dense fluid that is neither gas or liquid, but is both. I use this to make water a compressed gas in a cylinder and not a liquid. 

I open the value and release the pressure, causing the expanding water vapor to cool, as entropy increases and absorbs the energy. Since the expansion is cooling the water, some of the water starts to condense into droplets of liquid water. This lowers entropy, locally. These drops give off heat of fusion as the local entropy lowers. This way the entropy of the main expansion is providing itself a secondary energy source, for the larger entropy picture of things. The model that was developed was the entropy expansion of space-time causes gravity. Gravity is not the first or second law, but has a role further down the chain of command. This theory put the two big dogs of of science first.

This was one way to explain how galaxies could have formed so early in the universe and why there is so much open space-time between galaxies. The red shift would also be impacted by the local needs of the second law between the galaxies. The expansion also induces the stars to give off energy; nuclear fusion, to feed the universal entropy, thereby red shifting in places where there is not enough secondary energy output.

It has not been easy for science to characterize gravity as a force like the EM, weak and strong nuclear forces, since we cannot seem to find the energy output quanta that the rest of the forces give off, as they lower potential. Instead a new potential is created within the gravitational field, that slow the production of defects in widget factories.

[Bored chemist]

The CO2 in those little bottles is liquid.
The cooling is largely due to heat of vaporization. Nothing to do with entropy per se.
It's another of Puppypower's irrelevant rambles..

[Malamute Lover (OP)]

The CO2 in those little bottles is liquid.
The cooling is largely due to heat of vaporization. Nothing to do with entropy per se.
It's another of Puppypower's irrelevant rambles..

Yes, the CO2 in a cartridge is liquid, which has the benefit of a rather constant pressure being maintained at the exit as the liquid evaporates until the pressure inside the cartridge drops below a critical value. But I did not want to make things too complicated. My 'fast' particles are the ones that evaporate from the liquid first, which are indeed the fast particles.

[Bored chemist]

Most of the cooling occurs due to the requirement to break the attraction between the molecules of the liquid.
It's not an entropy thing as such.

[Malamute Lover (OP)]

Time is not driven by entropy. If entropy is decreased locally – and if it were not there would be no eggs to break – does that mean that time flowed backward? Does that mean that when entropy increases quickly, time flows faster? If you heat up a cup of coffee and drop an egg at the same time, what is happening to time? Is it going backward in the coffee pot? If you held onto the egg, would time not flow as fast?

If you consider mass and gravity, which can lower entropy, locally, mass causes time to slow; GR. Along with time slowing this is also where entropy is decreasing due to pressure. However, since there is no such thing as perpetual motion, the lowering entropy will create some new entropy; not 100% efficient, therefore, time continues to propagate, albeit slower, to the future. This is based on regular clocks.

Imagine a clock near an active star. It is being bombarded with photons, allowing solar panels to charge batteries, thereby reducing local entropy.  Now imagine a clock the same distance from a dead star of the same mass. No photons, no batteries being charged. Are you saying that the clock near the active star will run slower than the clock near the dead star? Remember, same distance from same amount of mass. No GR difference.

With the entropy clock; dead fish clock, time is dependent on temperature. In this case, cold decreases the energy that is available for entropy. This will make the time cycle of the dead fish get longer; refrigeration, so time appears to slow. Time is based on the relative behavior of clocks, whereas entropy is a physical thing that can alter the energy balance. 

Cook the fish and can it and you have greatly slowed entropy increase much better than refrigerating it. Temperature is not the determining factor here. It is all about details. And it has nothing to do with the rate of time flow. A cesium driven atomic clock is going to keep the same time on the table, in the refrigerator or in the frying pan. (It’s a heat resistant model.)

The entropy level would be the same in the output of the two factories, one defect per 1000 units. Entropy is relative, not absolute. It is not a thing, only a measure.

Like in the twin paradox, one twin factory is aging faster. Part of that faster aging involves entropy, which is being expressed as more defects per unit of time in the middle reference. Where space-time is more open and time is moving faster, entropy (twin) will propagate faster.

The factory that is producing more units is not just producing more defects, it is producing more order. The ratio is constant: 999 to 1. No entropy difference. Entropy is not a thing. It is a measure of disorder.

The expansion of the universe more than compensates for the lowering of entropy caused by gravity, so the second law remains in affect.

It is not gravity that lowers entropy but what is going on in the details. A collapsing cloud of hydrogen particles of a given mass and original volume will produce heat as it collapses but it can also produce additional energy from nuclear fusion. A collapsing cloud of iron particles of the same total mass and volume will produce the same amount of heat energy. But it will never produce fusion energy. Iron does not do that. Mass, volume, gravity – all the same in both cases. But the hydrogen scenario will produce fusion energy and the iron scenario will not.

The expansion of the universe has nothing to do with it. If the universe were in fact contracting at the same rate it is currently expanding, it would have no noticeable effect on what stars are currently doing. Mass-energy would still be positive. Gravity would still point ‘down’. Fusion would still happen in stars.

What this used to bring to mind was an affect similar to an expanding gas affect. Picture if we had a cylinder of compressed water, heated above ts critical point. Water above its critical point is a dense fluid that is neither gas or liquid, but is both. I use this to make water a compressed gas in a cylinder and not a liquid. 

I open the value and release the pressure, causing the expanding water vapor to cool, as entropy increases and absorbs the energy. Since the expansion is cooling the water, some of the water starts to condense into droplets of liquid water. This lowers entropy, locally. These drops give off heat of fusion as the local entropy lowers. This way the entropy of the main expansion is providing itself a secondary energy source, for the larger entropy picture of things. The model that was developed was the entropy expansion of space-time causes gravity. Gravity is not the first or second law, but has a role further down the chain of command. This theory put the two big dogs of science first.

This was one way to explain how galaxies could have formed so early in the universe and why there is so much open space-time between galaxies. The red shift would also be impacted by the local needs of the second law between the galaxies. The expansion also induces the stars to give off energy; nuclear fusion, to feed the universal entropy, thereby red shifting in places where there is not enough secondary energy output.

Gravity is always unidirectional in time at all levels from very small to very large. Entropy changes can be in either direction over a considerable range of scale. How can galaxy superclusters be so organized if SLOT is the big dog? Gravity results from mass-energy, not entropy changes. Gravity and factors related to the composition of matter are the cause of the continued pockets of low entropy without which SLOT would be virtually unnoticeable and would be only a small puppy.

Also, the First Law of Thermodynamics is that energy is conserved, which is generalized to mass-energy being conserved. This does not make anything happen, so it is not any kind of big dog. It is only a statement about how results must balance but gives no indication of the details of the balance. (BTW what’s wrong with the Third Law of Thermodynamics? And the Zeroth Law?)

As I said earlier, if the universe were in fact contracting at the same rate it is now expanding, there would be no change in how stars act. Mass-energy would still be positive, the physics of fusion would still be the same. The expansion of the universe is irrelevant.

It has not been easy for science to characterize gravity as a force like the EM, weak and strong nuclear forces, since we cannot seem to find the energy output quanta that the rest of the forces give off, as they lower potential. Instead a new potential is created within the gravitational field, that slow the production of defects in widget factories.

The mechanisms of the electromagnetic force were well understood in the 19th century. The force carrier particles were not rigorously identified until the 1930s. The strong and weak nuclear forces were known to be forces since the 1930s.  Mesons were discovered later and quarks were not well understood until the 1970s. It is not necessary to know the details of the force carrier particle to understood that a force is a force. Gravity has been known to be a force ever since Og dropped his club on his big toe. A still very useful quantitative description of how it works has been around since the 17th century.

And once more, all of your widget factories have the same entropy level – one high entropy defective widget versus 999 low entropy successful widgets.  Entropy is not a thing. It is a measure and a relative one at that.

[Malamute Lover (OP)]

Most of the cooling occurs due to the requirement to break the attraction between the molecules of the liquid.
It's not an entropy thing as such.

That is an entropy increase, the gas having less energy than the liquid. The cooling is because existing heat energy was used to break the bounds in the liquid. I am starting to be sorry I picked CO2 as an example.

[Bored chemist]

Most of the cooling occurs due to the requirement to break the attraction between the molecules of the liquid.
It's not an entropy thing as such.

That is an entropy increase, the gas having less energy than the liquid. The cooling is because existing heat energy was used to break the bounds in the liquid. I am starting to be sorry I picked CO2 as an example.

It's still a better example than helium.
But that's par for the course with PuppyPower.
He doesn't actually know what he's on about

[puppypower]

The factory that is producing more units is not just producing more defects, it is producing more order. The ratio is constant: 999 to 1. No entropy difference. Entropy is not a thing. It is a measure of disorder.

In the twin paradox, which is a similar scenario to the twin factories, the twin aging faster expresses more entropy.. Entropy is a state variable and aging faster reaches a more complicated state; old age, faster. Mass, via GR, can adjust the rate of local entropy by altering the local space-time reference. Once a star forms, larger stars process entropy faster and reach more complex states sooner. The expanding universe is speeding up time and the rate of entropy. This is compensating for the slowing of time due to mass and gravity.

But gravity is a short term entropy lowering affect, since once a star or planet is formed, the entropy starts to increase again into more complicated states. The star begins fusion and then the   formation of higher atomic states, which can then lead to molecules, etc.

The universe did not always expand at the same rate as today, nor did star formation always have the same rate. Expansion speeds up entropy while gravity slows the rate of entropy. However, entropy will continue to move forward and take away usable energy from the universe.

Entropy can locally go forward or reverse, but there is always an energy balance consideration. Whether you go forward or backwards, energy is being made net unavailable to the universe. In other words, to reverse entropy to a previous state, takes more energy than you will get back, This is connected to perpetual motion not being possible.

Gravity and mass is reversible. There is no energy made unavailable. I can take a large rock, lift it against gravity and then place it on a shelf. I can then reverse this, by pushing it off the shelf, to   get back all the energy. There is no lost energy, unless entropy is involved. Entropy and lost energy makes time asymmetric even for gravity and mass. Stars will age to a more complicated state even with mass present. In the end they explode to increase entropy, again. 

If you look at a star's core, this is the place where space-time is most contacted and time runs the slowest according to GR. This is the bottom of the star's space-time well. Ironically, the core of the star is also the place of fusion, highest heat; and fastest material transitions. There is a second lawyer of time; highest frequency core zone, due to pressure, that goes the opposite of the GR time affect of the core. The core is the faster place not the slowest as implied by GR.

Acceleration is one part distance and two parts time or a=d/t/t. Gravity has two time vectors; macro and micro. each going in opposite directions. The slow GR reference clock and a faster core gamma frequency based clock. As gravity  increases both become stronger bit in opposite directions. This does not happen with distance, since both space in space-time and space in fusion move in the same direction. It is one part distance and two parts time.

Time is not a thing but a perception of change of state that cannot fully reverse. Tomorrow will be different from today since time does not cycle or repeat like a clock. Lost energy assures that the arrow of time needs to go forward, since the previous state of time had more energy in play and we cannot recreate that or we will be violating perpetual motion.

[Bored chemist]

Since gravity is a force, when it lowers potential, it should give off energy.

Even if gravity was a force there's no reason for it to give off energy
If I put a rubber band round a rock the band exerts a force on the rock (and vice versa) but it doesn't give off energy.

There is no energy made unavailable. I can take a large rock, lift it against gravity and then place it on a shelf. I can then reverse this, by pushing it off the shelf, to   get back all the energy.

So, does that mean you realise you were wrong?

[Malamute Lover (OP)]

The factory that is producing more units is not just producing more defects, it is producing more order. The ratio is constant: 999 to 1. No entropy difference. Entropy is not a thing. It is a measure of disorder.

In the twin paradox, which is a similar scenario to the twin factories, the twin aging faster expresses more entropy. Entropy is a state variable and aging faster reaches a more complicated state; old age, faster.

That is not the Twin Paradox. The Twin Paradox was an argument used against Special Relativity. Two twins, one goes on a space ship journey at near light speed for many years, the other stays home. When the one who went traveling comes home, because of relativistic time dilation he is much younger than the one who stayed home. But in SR, motion is relative. Each would have seen the other moving at near light speed and undergoing the time dilation. Why should the traveler be younger than the stay at home?

In SR each would in fact see the other aging slower than himself because as the distance between them increased, the light waves from each one would reach the other spaced further apart than if there was no relative motion. Imagine each one taking a selfie every day and holding it up to the window for the other to see. (Assume excellent eyesight.) The near light speed rate of separation would cause the images to be spread apart by much more than a day. Each would see the other aging slowly. There is no paradox in SR.

Determining which was older would require that they be side by side with no relative speed. That requires a change in speed – acceleration. This is no longer a simple SR situation. General Relativity is needed. Most explanations simply drop the subject there. Although a proper mathematical explanation would get hairy (in GR nothing is easy) the basic idea is quite simple. The twin who went on the trip underwent acceleration to get up near light speed. This is not merely from the viewpoint of another observer. It is something that the traveler would really experience. The acceleration results in the time dimension getting dilated – stretched out – so that clocks on the spaceship really do run slower to an inertial frame outside observer, not just seem that way.

The twin at home experienced no acceleration and no time dilation. He would have aged faster than the traveling twin as judged by a later side by side comparison. There is no paradox in GR.

Similarly clocks in a gravity well really do run slower. But that is irrelevant to your argument. The stay at home twin got older, hair and teeth fell out, entropy really did a job on him. But your factory higher up in the gravity well does not age that way. It still turns out 1000 widgets a week or whatever (by its local calendar) and on average one of them is no good. The stay at home twin experienced a change in entropy. The higher up factory does not. It keeps producing order (999 widgets) and disorder (1 bad widget) at the same rate. No entropy change.

Mass, via GR, can adjust the rate of local entropy by altering the local space-time reference. Once a star forms, larger stars process entropy faster and reach more complex states sooner. The expanding universe is speeding up time and the rate of entropy. This is compensating for the slowing of time due to mass and gravity.

The direction and rate of entropy change is determined entirely by local circumstances. A large star produces more energy than a small star because it has more mass density and therefore more gravity, resulting in greater density and temperature in the interior.  That same mass spread over space would not produce nuclear fusion and energy. It is all in the details, not some global entropy force.

But gravity is a short term entropy lowering affect, since once a star or planet is formed, the entropy starts to increase again into more complicated states. The star begins fusion and then the formation of higher atomic states, which can then lead to molecules, etc.

At the same time a star lowers local entropy in the neighborhood, it increases global entropy. This is all due to gravity always being ‘down’ and that is due to real mass-energy always being positive. There is no entropy ‘force’. If you think there is, describe its workings in as much detail as other forces can be described.

A star undergoing nuclear fusion in its interior is decreasing local entropy in the surrounding neighborhood by supplying it with energy. (Actually in the entire universe but the useable energy gradient is higher close in. But in the interior of the star, there is actually an increase in entropy as bound energy in atoms gets unbound. The interior gets hotter and expands, reducing the rate of fusion. But would not the reduced strength of the gravitational field due to decreased density cause the clock to run faster and speed up that entropy increase process?

The clock related effects that you are talking about are negligible compared to what is really going on, gravity operating one-way due to the sign of all real mass-energy being positive, and the details of the processes that fundamental particles can carry out. Entropy is not a force. Overall increase in entropy is an effect, not a cause.

The universe did not always expand at the same rate as today, nor did star formation always have the same rate. Expansion speeds up entropy while gravity slows the rate of entropy. However, entropy will continue to move forward and take away usable energy from the universe.

I presume by ’expansion speeds up entropy’ you are referring to time running slower in a strong gravitational field and speeding up as the field strength decreases. For example, a clock on the surface of the earth runs a bit slower than one halfway to the Moon. The universe has expanded and the mass is now spread out further. The reduced mass density means a weaker gravitational field and therefore a faster clock. One must look at this carefully. Since there is no outside observer of the universe, and rate of expansion is essentially uniform everywhere, at least on the large scale, we can only compare the rate of time flow by looking at different times not different places.

In the past, the universe was denser and the universal gravitational field stronger. Clocks therefore ran slower. Yet we see the largest increases of entropy in the past. Temperature dropped rapidly in the early universe as density dropped. The Cosmic Microwave Background lost a lot of energy but is only doing so today at a negligible rate. Should not today’s low gravitational field strength and faster clocks result in a more rapid change in entropy?

BTW if the lower strength of the universal gravitational field cause clocks to run faster today than in the past, would that not imply that the CMB frequency increased over time rathe than decreasing? If that were the case you would need to (a) come up with a different cause for the CMB that explained a low frequency origin and (b) explain where the increase in CMB energy is coming from? And is that not a decrease in entropy? Think carefully about this one.

Entropy can locally go forward or reverse, but there is always an energy balance consideration. Whether you go forward or backwards, energy is being made net unavailable to the universe. In other words, to reverse entropy to a previous state, takes more energy than you will get back, This is connected to perpetual motion not being possible.

Perpetual motion machines of oldtime pseudo-science were supposed to produce excess energy from nowhere. That is a violation of mass-energy conservation. A machine that keeps running forever (perpetual motion) but without supplying excess energy is a violation of SLOT. Why? Because simply by being in the world, it will necessarily interact with the rest of the world and have its energy randomized, no longer being preserved in regular motion. (But again why does it have low entropy energy to begin with? Where did that come from?)

Gravity and mass is reversible. There is no energy made unavailable. I can take a large rock, lift it against gravity and then place it on a shelf. I can then reverse this, by pushing it off the shelf, to   get back all the energy. There is no lost energy, unless entropy is involved. Entropy and lost energy makes time asymmetric even for gravity and mass. Stars will age to a more complicated state even with mass present. In the end they explode to increase entropy, again. 

If you drop a rock, its potential energy due to gravity will become kinetic energy as it accelerates. When it hits the ground, that energy will be expended in some fashion, the rock will get hotter and maybe break (and maybe get less magnetized), the ground will be compressed and get hotter, shrapnel may fly, sonic and seismic waves will spread out.  The kinetic energy does not disappear. It just gets transformed.

The laws of Physics, except SLOT, are time reversible. If all of the energy that was dispersed when the rock hit came back together in just the right way, that is, in exact reversal, the rock would come back together and go back into your hand. There is no violation of any laws here, except SLOT.

The question is, if entropy is always supposed to increase, how come there are gravitating planets and rocks to drop onto them? How come there are sources of energy that arose since the Big Bang that facilitate local reductions in entropy?  How come there are stars, galaxies, superclusters, all increases in organization? The answer is that gravity is time asymmetric. It is always ‘down’.  Why? Because all mass-energy in the universe has a positive sign.

Gravity and mass are not reversible. If you pick that rock up again, you need to input energy to restore the potential energy so it can drop again. If you let it go, it falls by itself. For the rock to jump up on its own without energy input would require ‘running the movie backward’. That would mean antigravity and that would imply a negative mass-energy universe. The reason for SLOT is that all the mass-energy in the universe has the same sign and gravity always ‘pulls’. There is a built-in time asymmetry in the universe.

Entropy is not a thing. It is a result

If you look at a star's core, this is the place where space-time is most contacted and time runs the slowest according to GR. This is the bottom of the star's space-time well. Ironically, the core of the star is also the place of fusion, highest heat; and fastest material transitions. There is a second lawyer of time; highest frequency core zone, due to pressure, that goes the opposite of the GR time affect of the core. The core is the faster place not the slowest as implied by GR.

You have just negated your own argument.

The truth is that the effects of changes in clock rate are negligible compared to the other forces involved.

Acceleration is one part distance and two parts time or a=d/t/t. Gravity has two time vectors; macro and micro. each going in opposite directions. The slow GR reference clock and a faster core gamma frequency based clock. As gravity  increases both become stronger bit in opposite directions. This does not happen with distance, since both space in space-time and space in fusion move in the same direction. It is one part distance and two parts time.

Gravity is unidirectional in time. It does not go back and forth. Recall my prior example, a cloud of hydrogen of a given mass and volume and a cloud of iron atoms of the same mass and volume that collapse into compact bodies under gravitational attraction.

Assuming sufficient mass, the collapsed hydrogen would begin fusion, increasing immediately local entropy by freeing bound energy, and reducing nearby neighborhood entropy levels by sending out that energy. The iron mass will not begin fusion and the large increase in local entropy and decrease in nearby entropy will not happen. Yet because the two bodies have the same mass, they will have the same gravitational forces in effect and the same clock rates.

The effect of gravity on clock rates typically has negligible influence on entropy changes. You have to get near black hole level to talk about that.

Time is not a thing but a perception of change of state that cannot fully reverse. Tomorrow will be different from today since time does not cycle or repeat like a clock. Lost energy assures that the arrow of time needs to go forward, since the previous state of time had more energy in play and we cannot recreate that or we will be violating perpetual motion.

Time is a dimension in 4D spacetime. The types and magnitude of changes do not affect that. A hydrogen bomb reflects a pretty drastic change of state. Yet it has negligible effect on my old-fashioned windup wristwatch a thousand miles away. Did time flow differently ‘there’ and ‘here’? Did the cesium 137 atom floating around in the mushroom cloud oscillate any different than the one on my kitchen table? Will the atomic clocks they are driving show substantially different times?

If the universe consisted entirely of a zero net gain perpetual motion machine and there was only one kind of energy, would there be a SLOT? Imagine a spinning disk with angular momentum, but no other kinds of energy being possible and no other place for energy to go, the disk could spin forever. It is the variety of energy types and the choice of possible locations that allows energy movement. And it is the unidirectionality of gravity and its cause, the universal positive sign of real mass-energy, that result in SLOT.

[puppypower]

Gravity and mass are not reversible. If you pick that rock up again, you need to input energy to restore the potential energy so it can drop again. If you let it go, it falls by itself. For the rock to jump up on its own without energy input would require ‘running the movie backward’. That would mean antigravity and that would imply a negative mass-energy universe. The reason for SLOT is that all the mass-energy in the universe has the same sign and gravity always ‘pulls’. There is a built-in time asymmetry in the universe.

With the example of the rock and gravity, it takes energy to lift the rock. Once the rock is  released all that energy is restored, due to gravity The energy balance results in all useable energy forward or backwards; energy conservation.

To lower entropy, you also need to add energy, and like gravity, entropy will also reverse itself, but now via the second law. However, some energy will be missing and/or made unusable in both directions. I call it limbo energy. It is still in the universe, but it is no longer in a state, where it can be easily reused, without even further loss of useable energy. The entropy of the universe has to increase to lower the entropic potential implied by the 2nd law. This creates limbo energy only useful to entropy. Entropy does not share, as does gravity.

All other expressions of potential energy, based on mass and gravity and all the forces of nature, need to decrease to lower their potential. They will release energy, which can be reused; energy conservation. Entropy has to increase to lower potential. This adds a twist  where more is less instead of less is less. More is less has an energy cost.

The core of the sun has the most time dilation due to GR. This is the bottom of the space-time well. Our mechanical and atomic clocks will slow there. As gravity gains mass and compresses,  the pressure causes the core to heat up. The material and energy frequencies increase due to the heat and pressure. The atomic and energy based clocks, used by the star's core, get faster and faster. These transitional clocks, are not getting slower and slower, as suggested by GR. Rather the choice of natural clock is getting faster and faster; entropy between the margins.

We use atomic clocks; Cesium Fountain, for accuracy. The sun uses nuclear clocks to set the pace for accuracy; gamma and fusion transitional clocks. It needs this fast time speed for marginal entropy. This is a different time vector than that of GR; slowed cesium clock.

The heat of fusion is increasing the entropy once again, as matter changes states and moves within the convection. Solar flares reverse gravity and continue off into space. In the end, mass and gravity helped walk the matter up an energy hill, and once over the hill, entropy begins to accelerate again. It is two steps back and three steps forward. The star cannot use gravity to put the entropy genie back into the bottle, one fusion is lit, since some energy goes to limbo.

If you were a spiritual minded person, who also believes in science, entropy and limbo energy would be good place to find spiritual realms. This limbo energy is predicted by the second law and would be based on a form that cannot be accessed fully from the inertial states. Rather an ever increasing pool of limbo energy, connected to increase ever increasing entropy, would be forming. The lack of full reusability by matter places this energy a different type of dimension.

This all comes together, if we assume the speed of light reference is the ground state or the zero state of the universe. There entropy would be infinite.This is the driver of the second law. Infinite entropy would place all energy into limbo. This would mean there is no useable energy for inertial dynamics so time would stop and then become timeless.

[Bored chemist]

To lower entropy, you also need to add energy,

No.
Imagine that I have some water at zero degrees.
If I remove energy it freezes- and this reduces the entropy.

[Malamute Lover (OP)]

With the example of the rock and gravity, it takes energy to lift the rock. Once the rock is released all that energy is restored, due to gravity The energy balance results in all useable energy forward or backwards; energy conservation.

When the rock is dropped, some energy is lost in the form of gravitational waves. These waves have been detected in high energy astronomical events and carry energy. What is happening is that as the rock drops, it is going deeper into the gravity well and its clock is slowing. Although its kinetic energy relative to the ground has increased, it is also moving a little slower as seen by an outside observer and it therefore hits a little softer than that outside observer expected. Where did the missing energy go? Gravitational waves, a consequence of falling in a gravitational field. 

When the rock is picked up, a little extra effort is need to speed up the clock, over and above restoring the potential energy and whatever energy is lost in the effort. In conditions on earth, the energy difference is much too tiny to notice. But when neutron stars revolve around each other, the gravitational wave loss is enough to cause the orbits to noticeably decay.

Energy is conserved of course but not symmetrically. It has different forms before and after the event because gravity is always ‘down’. The reason we notice entropy increasing and formulate SLOT is because of low entropy pockets formed by the effect of gravity.

To lower entropy, you also need to add energy, and like gravity, entropy will also reverse itself, but now via the second law. However, some energy will be missing and/or made unusable in both directions. I call it limbo energy. It is still in the universe, but it is no longer in a state, where it can be easily reused, without even further loss of useable energy. The entropy of the universe has to increase to lower the entropic potential implied by the 2nd law. This creates limbo energy only useful to entropy. Entropy does not share, as does gravity.

Gravity never reverses itself. It is always ‘down’.

Energy in locked up form can be released in large quantities by the input of a much smaller amount of energy.  Plants grew because sunlight energized chemical activities. Under the right conditions, these plants became oil. Gasoline powers cars but it only takes a bit of electrical power to unlock the energy in gasoline. Why is there a sun to enable those plants to grow? Gravity, which caused enough mass to accumulate in the same place to start fusion processes.  By feedback processes in the plants, energy was stored. The total entropy of the universe increased but cars get moved around. Energy moves around a lot. To say energy becomes unusable may or may not be the case depending on circumstances. There is no such thing as entropic potential. Circumstances can change.

Entropy is not a thing. It is a measure and a relative one at that.

All other expressions of potential energy, based on mass and gravity and all the forces of nature, need to decrease to lower their potential. They will release energy, which can be reused; energy conservation. Entropy has to increase to lower potential. This adds a twist  where more is less instead of less is less. More is less has an energy cost.

SLOT applies only to the statistics of the entire universe. If it represented a force, it would act the same everywhere as gravity does and local entropy would never decrease.

The core of the sun has the most time dilation due to GR. This is the bottom of the space-time well. Our mechanical and atomic clocks will slow there. As gravity gains mass and compresses,  the pressure causes the core to heat up. The material and energy frequencies increase due to the heat and pressure. The atomic and energy based clocks, used by the star's core, get faster and faster. These transitional clocks, are not getting slower and slower, as suggested by GR. Rather the choice of natural clock is getting faster and faster; entropy between the margins.

Clocks do not get faster because of heat and pressure. There is no such thing as an energy clock. You want to have two kinds of time but there is only one. Only time dilation can affect atomic clocks. Gravity is one cause of time dilation. If energy had a direct effect on time, it would be obvious in high energy collider events where the energy density is beyond colossal. It does not happen.

The core of the sun is very dense, about 160 times as dense as water. The gravitational force at the surface of the core is very high, something like 600g. But here is the funny thing. Because of its very high temperature, the density of the core does not vary a lot. As one moved into it (hypothetically) the gravitational force would decrease because there is less mass underneath.

At the very center, where it is the hottest, being furthest from the heat sink of the main body, the gravitational force is theoretically zero. All of the mass of the sun is equally distributed around the center. In practice, the center of the sun is still subject to other gravitational fields from planets on up to the galaxy. But the gravitational force at the center will still be very low.

Atomic clocks would run slow at the surface of the core but would increase in speed as one went further down. Would this have any noticeable effect on fusion rates? No. Even in the core of the sun relativistic effects are trivial compared to the energy levels involved.

We use atomic clocks; Cesium Fountain, for accuracy. The sun uses nuclear clocks to set the pace for accuracy; gamma and fusion transitional clocks. It needs this fast time speed for marginal entropy. This is a different time vector than that of GR; slowed cesium clock.

There is only one kind of time. It is affected by acceleration, including gravitation. But there is no nuclear time.

The heat of fusion is increasing the entropy once again, as matter changes states and moves within the convection. Solar flares reverse gravity and continue off into space. In the end, mass and gravity helped walk the matter up an energy hill, and once over the hill, entropy begins to accelerate again. It is two steps back and three steps forward. The star cannot use gravity to put the entropy genie back into the bottle, one fusion is lit, since some energy goes to limbo.

In fusion, bound energy is released, increasing entropy in the immediate vicinity. That energy goes out and lowers entropy in the neighborhood. Not just the immediate neighborhood. The entire universe gets a touch warmer because of those photons. The energy did not go into limbo. It is in a different form that is less organized. But it did things far and wide, maybe nudging a gas cloud and helping it collapse into a star. When the entire universe is considered as a statistical ensemble, one can talk about entropy always increasing. But considered locally, it is clear that there is no entropic force.

If you were a spiritual minded person, who also believes in science, entropy and limbo energy would be good place to find spiritual realms. This limbo energy is predicted by the second law and would be based on a form that cannot be accessed fully from the inertial states. Rather an ever increasing pool of limbo energy, connected to increase ever increasing entropy, would be forming. The lack of full reusability by matter places this energy a different type of dimension.

There is no limbo energy, there is energy changed into different forms which might have surprising effects. It is not in a different dimension. SLOT is a heuristically derived rule of thumb that would barely be relevant to anything if there were no pockets of low entropy resulting from gravity always being ‘down’, a result of mass-energy always being positive.

Even in a state of maximum entropy, there are still statistical fluctuations where things can happen. Energy does not disappear and it can turn up at surprising times. SLOT as a rule of thumb is very useful. SLOT as a universal law only applies to the entire universe.

This all comes together, if we assume the speed of light reference is the ground state or the zero state of the universe. There entropy would be infinite.This is the driver of the second law. Infinite entropy would place all energy into limbo. This would mean there is no useable energy for inertial dynamics so time would stop and then become timeless.

I have no idea what this means.

The speed of light is a specific non-zero quantity. It is not a zero state of anything.  If the speculation is true that its value is determined by virtual particle density, then it is definitely not a ground state.

Entropy is a statistical measure. A gas in a container that is at the same pressure and temperature as its environment cannot be used to do work. But temperature is the average kinetic energy of the particles. In a large tank, it is entirely possible that a dozen molecules get bumped around so that they very briefly come close together an have an average kinetic energy equivalent to the temperature at the surface of the sun and the next split instant get bounced around in such a way that they very briefly have the temperature of liquid nitrogen.

Entropy being at a maximum does not mean there are no statistical fluctuations. In fact, the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics, that there is no Absolute Zero because of quantum fluctuations, guarantees that things will always happen no matter what. There is no such thing as infinite entropy. And because there is change, there will always be time.