Was the formation of the universe at the Big Bang a 'negative entropy' process?

Very probably, yes.

It seems that all of the matter in our universe was synthesized from primordial 'quantum fluctuations' in the gravitational field near the Planck Era. We can see a small bit of this happening today in the way that stars work. The ultimate origin of the energy that leaves a star in the form of light is in the star's gravitational field. Potential energy is lost and kinetic energy is gained which goes into colliding and fusing atoms to make light and helium as by products. The star then radiates away some of its rest mass in the form of this radiation. Although the total entropy of the star plus radiation system remains fixed, the distribution has changed with the radiation carrying off 'positive entropy' and the gravitational field losing a bit of its entropy in the process. The gravitational field can, in some respects, be thought of as a reservoir of negative entropy.

During the Big Bang, matter was created at the expense of the cosmological gravitational field which is the ultimate energy 'bank' for the universe. Presumably, whatever entropy was lost by the gravitational field during the quantum fluctuations was gained by the matter and radiation produced. The 'system' consisting of matter and radiation is not a closed thermodynamic system because of the influence of gravity, so it is not too clear to me how to define its entropy independently of the gravitational field of the universe. I am not by any means an expert in these matters. I do not think, however, I would characterize the birth of the universe as a 'negative entropy' process, because it seems that when you combine the entropy gain by the matter and radiation, with the entropy lost by the gravitational field, you end up with no net change rather than an overall negative change in entropy. I do not really understand the role of entropy and how to measure it near the Big Bang. Considering how violently space-time is being affected, entropy like total energy, may not be a very useful guide to the essential physics.


Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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