Once you've built the box all you have to do is wait. We need to build an unbreakable, totally insulated box with a lot of stuff inside it - enough matter/energy to make interesting information and/or life as we know it. And this system has to be truly closed, not like an expanding universe. What we need to do is figure out a way to give some system enough time to do random stuff for entropy to reverse. So how do we give the universe time to reverse entropy, even though it's expanding? Which means we don't have infinite time to wait for the metaphorical cards in the air to finally land in an interesting order, because the cards are getting further and further apart as time passes so that eventually they won't even be able to interact with each other at all. The problem when applied to entropy is that the universe is also expanding. Yes, the end result probably is an abysmally small number, but it's bigger than zero! You can do this as many times as you want and end up with arbitrarily low entropy, where the matter has been reshaped to pretty much anything you want - statue of liberty, a computer, or a human brain. Then there's a 0.01^2 chance that it happens twice in a row, and 0.01^3 chance it happens three times in a row. Say there's a 0.01 chance of some pocket of bouncing matter lowering its entropy by some small amount over a small amount of time. If you're still not convinced, just apply the proof by induction. Glass unshattering? Life randomly forming? Way less likely than cards landing in order, but it's the same principle you just have to wait that much longer (way longer than the age of the universe)! This mathematical concept applies to any process in the universe. The point is, it would happen eventually, given a long enough time). ALMOST is the key word of course, and the fact is if you had an infinite amount of time and did this forever, it would happen eventually (you wouldn't actually need an infinite amount of time.

What are the chances that after being thrown in the air, a deck of cards comes back and lands in a perfectly neat pile and completely in order? Almost zero. A common analogy is throwing a deck of cards in the air. Believe it or not, it is possible for entropy to reverse in a closed system, at least according to current understanding of physics.Įntropy is purely a statistical process, which means the only reason we tend towards higher entropy, is that there's a higher chance of going to a high-entropy state than a low-entropy state.

Reverse entropy