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Time's arrow...
There is a law of nature that seems to be universal, applying to all sorts of
situations. It was initially formulated with respect to thermodynamics, the
study of heat flow. In that context the second law states that heat flows from
hot objects to cold objects with a consequent decrease in the hot object's
temperature and increase in the cold object's temperature. The temperature
changes reduce the distinction between the hot and cold objects, increasing the
entropy of the
system.
It is the tendency for entropy to increase over time that is the universal
aspect of the second law. This tendency is so ubiquitous that it has been taken
to define the direction of
time's
flow from
past
to
future.
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