Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 329
ENTROPY AND THE FINITE UNIVERSE re-supplied to separate the constituents of water, i. e. oxygen and hydrogen, once again. . In all these cases there is no permanent loss of energy. . This is not what is referred to as the loss of energy through entropy. The long and short of this is that every chemical reaction either releases energy or absorbs it, and all such exchanges of energy do not produce any permanent waste. . But there is some loss of energy which is constant and irreversible. It has nothing to do with normal chemical reactions. Instead of going into the scientific complexities of how this happens, the reader is advised to visualize a hot body gradually cooling off. If it cools to the level of the ambient temperature of the atmosphere, a state of equilibrium will be reached. The flow of heat from the hot body to the cool atmosphere cannot reverse itself. It is always heat which flows in the direction of cold. When at last the entire heat of the universe would have thus exhausted itself reaching a state of equilibrium, no further exchange of heat would remain possible and no chemical reaction could be visualized. It is this to which scientists refer as the 'heat death' of the universe. . The quantum of the consumed energy of the universe continues to rise and the quantum of the consumable energy of the entire universe continues to fall. Hence a time may come, however remote, when the entire universe will ultimately sink into an inert state which could never be revitalized into its previous form of material existence. No action would ever take place, no reaction would ever be possible. This is another name for absolute death or nothingness. . To have an idea of how infinitesimal this loss of energy is, the reader should remember that even scientists have to estimate it with the help of complex mathematics. . For them the universe remains practically the same in 318