<br>The standing theory is that the universe will not collapse into itself,
but rather infinitely expand until the other stars and galaxies will be
so far away that the night sky will be completely black. A cold and
lonely death as it were. String theorists believe our universe is one
of infinite other
universes that blink in and out of existence like a bubble in a sea of
other bubbles. In fact one theory is that once the wall of one of these
bubble universes comes into contact with another bubble universe, it
creates a whole new universe and that is how our universe was created
some 13.7 billion years ago.<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 9/12/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Joe Fish</b> <<a href="mailto:reverend.joe@gmail.com">reverend.joe@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
No, I can't, that was my point.<br><br>I've read that there is conjecture that there may be conditions where it does not -- such as before the big bang, during a "Big Crunch".<br><br>In other words, assuming the Universe existed before The Big Bang, there had to exist some means of getting the universe to the state it was at the beginning of The Big Crunch -- and if the universe that existed sometime before that event was like ours (ie, always INCREASING in entropy), then there are those that philosophize that there must be some conditions in which that "old" universe went from a state of higher entropy (like our universe now) to a state of lower entropy, or higher "order", ie, the perfectly-ordered universe that consisted of all matter and energy at on millionth of a pinpoint spot and the rest of all space-time consisting of utter nothingness.
<br><br>As I said, this is more a matter for quantum physicists and philosophers (I sometime wonder if there is a difference ... ;^) than it is for me.<br><br>As an engineer, I consider the 2nd Law to be just that ... a LAW.
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