War Irreversibility and Direction of Time

There are physical processes which are reversible, like the clock pendulum swinging back and forth without stop, and there are processes which are irreversible, like starting a war ending in mutual large scale destruction without possibility of return. What is the difference? This connects to the previous post on a proof of the 2nd Law of thermodynamics as the main unresolved question of physics (modulo the resolution/proof suggested in Computational Thermodynamics).

The Clock and the Arrow: A Short Theory of Time seeks the reason why physical processes move forward in time, including all forms of life showing progress from birth to death, thus expressing irreversibility, as a combination of (i) finite precision computation and (ii) increasing tension/difference. 

Time reversal of smashing an egg is impossible because of lack of precision in a restoration/reconstruction process. This is different from the standard explanation based on statistical mechanics claiming that time moving forward is more likely than backward, which is not illuminating.

A basic model combines (i) convection, (ii) diffusion and (iii) reaction = production/destruction, into a system with competing processes of:

• increasing tension/difference: convection + production  
• decreasing tension/difference: diffusion + destruction. 

As an urgent example, a war is the (inevitable) consequence of an arms race a during pre-war phase building tension/difference until so large that any little spark sets (lack of precision) off an avalanche of  destruction. Here displacement of weapons into local accumulation building tension as an anabol process corresponds to convection (assembling Uranium 238 to an atomic bomb), and levelling everything to gravel (pressing the button) corresponds to diffusion/desstruction in a metabol process.

Another example is the transition from laminar fluid flow with diffusion no longer strong enough to control tension/difference created by convection into turbulent flow with small scale motion turned into heat in turbulent diffusion. 

Irreversibility with a direction of time is here expressed by the fact that an anabol process as a construction process requiring precision, is slow (brick by brick building a house or letter by letter writing a book), while a metabol process like burning a book can be quick because coarse precision is enough. The reason unburning of a book is impossible is that the fine precision required cannot be met in finite time. 

The ocurrence of irreversibility is an inevitable consequence of increasing tension from convection + production creating increasingly sharp differences, which ultimately have to be broken down in some form of destructive Reset.  In the Green Reset the Industrial Society built by fossil fuel over a period of 100 years creating increasing inequality will have to be destroyed into a New Fossil-Free Society of equality, according to Agenda 2030.   

  

Destruction of human civilisation in a nuclear power exchange is a matter of minutes, does not require precision bombing and is irreversible. 

Life is irreversible because the anabol process of building a living organism cell by cell with finite precision is slow, while the metabol process required to sustain growth is quick and so cannot be reversed with finite precision.