Daytona Beach, FL –
The Law of Maximum Entropy Production within IYAAP –
The Law of Maximum Entropy Production (LMEP) is introduced in conversation with the astronaut in the flight planning room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. He affirms what Major Carrington has said about preparation being one way to battle entropy, but he goes even farther to say that with the proper constraints in place, disorder might be averted.
The story cannot mention the LMEP by name, because it hadn’t been articulated when I was a student pilot in 1987 and 1988. However, the astronaut pretty much recites this law to me word for word – albeit anachronistically.
Whereas the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a law of despair, stating that systems fall apart over time, the LMEP states that not only do things fall apart as fast as possible, but once they have done so, order is restored. That is, the world is in the order production business. The LMEP also dictates that it is possible to keep things from falling apart, if one has put the proper constraints into place beforehand.
Thus, in a story where everything feels like it wants to dissipate into chaos, the LMEP allows me to wrap everything up neatly in a world that once again has order. Maybe we cannot escape the bounds of closed and efficient systems, but that doesn’t mean we cannot construct our own systems. Like the astronaut in the story, I’m talking about everything.