What is the entropy gap, and what would it mean for the fate of the universe?

LOG · Mar 18, 2013

I was introduced to the idea of the entropy gap on Wikipedia, but further information on the web seems somewhat sparse.

My two chief questions would be:
1) What (theoretically) causes the entropy gap to exist?
2) What would the existence of the entropy gap mean for the fate of the universe (if anything)? Are we still looking at heat death?

Am I even asking appropriate questions in regard to the topic, for that matter?

Maxx · Mar 18, 2013

LOG said:
I was introduced to the idea of the entropy gap on Wikipedia, but further information on the web seems somewhat sparse.

My two chief questions would be:
1) What (theoretically) causes the entropy gap to exist?
2) What would the existence of the entropy gap mean for the fate of the universe (if anything)? Are we still looking at heat death?

Am I even asking appropriate questions in regard to the topic, for that matter?

I'd never heard of this gap. Apparently it is an artifact of looking at the gravitational field equations out of context.

Or -- in other words -- it's the "flatness problem" all over again (warning: PDFs of ever expanding size):

http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1142/S0217732399001139

So, no heat-death in an expanding universe.

And Barrow (in a more expansive mood):

http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9903225.pdf

Astro's Answer (68% ie not 42), using Quintessence:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1005.0745.pdf

What is the entropy gap, and what would it mean for the fate of the universe?

LOG

Lagrangian

Maxx

Got the hang of it, here