Thermodynamics and The Universe

i don't know if this answer is right, but . . .our universe is 13 billion years old. let's picture the universe as a beach ball. the center of this ball is where the big bang occurred. light travels in all directions from the center. the universe (beach ball) is thus 26 light years in diameter. the age, then, is the radius.again, not sure if this is the right answer, but . . .oh, and welcome to the boards.

---

Question. Always Question." . . .and some nights I just pray to the god of sex and drugs and rock'n'roll"--meatloafWant to help give back to the world community? Did you know that your computer can help? Join the newest TeamEvC Climate Modelling to help improve climate predictions for a better tomorrow.

how do you guys come up with this stuff? it still blows my mind.something tells, though, that all the ego-centric people would be incredibly happy here, what from being the only thing around, and thus, the most important thing around.granted, it would have to be an ego-centric particle.

the heck are you talking about, buz? this makes practically no sense. the energy flow, biologically, is not
sun -> microscopic organisms -> soil -> plantsrather, it is
sun -> photosynthetic organisms (such as plants and algae) -> non-photosynthetic organisms (this is a generalization, not including chemosynthetic organisms that do not rely on the sun for energy)in layman's terms, you could say sun powers plants power animals (though this is a horrendous simplification). also, the soil is useless for plants with the exception of storing the minerals and whatnot that plants require--certainly you've heard of hydroponics (growing plants in water alone).

what do you define entropy as?because I define it as an increase in disorder, as measured by a release of heat. living things increase the order within them, at the expense of what's around them.I'm not a physicist, so I wouldn't know how to determine if the decrease in entropy within the living counteracts the increase in entropy. I seem to remember that in an open system, entropy tends to equilibrium, and the earth's ecosystem is an open system.