> [ohlman]: I would be interested in what you mean by "infinite in time" here... since, of course, time cannot be infinite in the backwards direction (as this would state that "an infinite time has passed", a clear contradiction in terms).
By "the dimension of time is infinite", I mean that time has no boundaries or termination in either direction, future or past. So yes, an infinite time has already passed. I see no contradiction in terms. Perhaps if you examined how this follows as a necessary condition of any real universe (as opposed to mathematical or thought universes) in the Meta Model (as developed in "Dark Matter, ..."), and is not merely some axiom or personal philosophy, the apparent contradiction would be resolved.
To take but one of several such lines of thought, Zeno's paradoxes show that time must be infinitely divisible for motion or change to be possible. But if infinitely divisible, then an infinite number of time components pass by in every nanosecond, just as they do in every trillion years. So it becomes rather irrelevant how long time lasts because it is just a measure of change, and therefore occurs at different effective rates at different scales.
> [ohlman]: Also, I thought that the second law clearly stated that in any closed system the overall entropy was always increasing. Has this law been repealed?
This law is correct at the scale it applies to -- phenomena involving the light-carrying medium (i.e., all electric, magnetic, and mechanical forces). It is incomplete when other scales are included in the picture, as I described earlier. This characteristic of the 2nd law is unique to the Meta Model, as far as I know.
> [ohlman]: If this is correct (the idea about gravitons losing energy, which then gets turned into lightwaves, which turn in to gravitic energy, etc.) then the actual gravity of objects decreases over distance due to this *friction* and not merely the standard formula.
The range of gravitational force is indeed finite -- about one kiloparsec. This is explained in "Possible new properties of gravity", and explains why the character of the law of gravity seems to change for large-scale structures.
> [ohlman]: (Since of course the newly created gravity would not be *traveling* in the same direction as that which had created it, and thus the system as a whole would be becoming less directed.) And indeed is not this a sort of gravitic entropy?? And does this imply that object near to a large gravity source (such as a black hole) are then *heavier* when measured in their relationship with third object??
You lost me here. All objects are heavier in a stronger gravitational field even in Newtonian gravity. Objects do gain energy (which has a mass equivalent) by absorbing gravitons, but they radiate that energy away as heat, and stay in thermodynamic equilibrium. If something disturbs that equilibrium, the planet would be at risk to explode in short order.
As I explained in the Big Bang thread, with respect to entropy, all actions add entropy to one medium while they take it from another. From instant to instant, the entropy of the universe never changes. -|Tom|-
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