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the Vast Vacuum. the vacuum cannot be balanced because it is vast. quantum vacuum fluctuation. feedback loops; consciousness
The universe is a vast vacuum. The vacuum cannot be balanced because it is vast. Vacuum energy, otherwise known as the zero point field, or quantum foam, makes up most of the volume of our Universe (as well as any other universes that may exist). Quantum fluctuations within this field are constantly giving rise to particles and antiparticles which immediately annihilate each other in a burst of light – hence their presence does not compromise the overall amount of nothingness in the Universe. As time moves forward, so these virtual particles appear and disappear becoming increasingly complex until they form atoms at around 10–6 seconds after the big bang.
Clearly the vacuum has been expanding since its creation. Cosmologists are undecided as to whether it will continue to expand indefinitely, or eventually reach a maximum point and begin contracting toward a big crunch.
Quantum fluctuations within the vacuum have also been proposed as a mechanism for generating virtual particles, with pairs of 'virtual' fermions regularly splitting into quarks and antiquarks."[12]
In order to discuss the possible 'maximization' of the vacuum, we must first consider two important concepts: Thermodynamics and information theory. As per thermodynamics, matter has a tendency toward disorder (or entropy) but in practice it often tends towards more orderly configurations. For example, gas particles tend to diffuse until their density becomes uniform throughout an enclosed space.
The problem with this tendency is that it is not always possible to reduce the entropy of a system. In fact, in many cases entropy can only increase as order is lost to chaos. Classical thermodynamics was unable to account for such situations and so Gibbs suggested an additional law (the 'entropy principle') which could be used when considering systems in equilibrium where there was no possibility of an overall decrease in the entropy.
The entropy principle was later refined by the laws of information theory. In 1936, Claude Shannon suggested a more general interpretation of thermodynamics in terms of information content (which is essentially equivalent to temperature): If two systems are separated then even if they are in equilibrium with each other, there will be no flow of energy or matter between them and so their total entropy must remain constant.