In most of the discussion of nonsense in this series, the nonsense stems from a poor understanding of physics. This post introduces some nonsense that must be taken seriously. Perhaps, this nonsense, also stems ultimately from a poor understanding of physics. The people with the poor understanding this time, however, are some of the most brilliant minds in physics.
The School-Book Story
This discussion starts with the school-book story of the heat death of the universe. By calling it the "school-book" story I do not mean to pooh-pooh it too much. In fact, it is most likely the correct story. Much of this post, however, will focus on caveats and complications to the story as it is usually told.
In thermodynamics, the universe is defined as the system and its surroundings. We have seen that the second law requires that for any change the total entropy of the system and the surroundings must increase or stay the same. As time goes by, therefore, the entropy of the universe increases.
