English

Does the second law hold at cosmic scales?

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2019-02-19 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

The second law of thermodynamics is known to hold at small scales also when gravity plays a leading role, as in the case of black holes and self-gravitating radiation spheres. It has been suggested that it should as well at large scales. Here, by a purely kinematic analysis \textemdash based on the history of the Hubble factor and independent of any cosmological model \textemdash , we explore if this law is fulfilled in the case of homogeneous and isotropic universes regardless of the sign of the spatial curvature.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1902.06651,
  title  = {Does the second law hold at cosmic scales?},
  author = {Manuel Gonzalez-Espinoza and Diego Pavón},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1902.06651},
  year   = {2019}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:43:52.988Z