Informational temperature concept and the nature of self-organization

Conference · Tue Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:447565

Lin, Shu-Kun ^[1]

---

1. Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI), Basel (Switzerland)

Self-organization phenomena are spontaneous processes. Their behavior should be governed by the second law of thermodynamics. The dissipative structure theory of the Prigogine school of thermodynamics claims that {open_quotes}order out of chaos{close_quotes} through {open_quotes}self-organization{close_quotes} and challenges the validity of the second law of thermodynamics. Unfortunately this theory is questionable. Therefore we have to reconsider the related fundamental theoretical problems. Informational entropy (S) and information (I) are related by S = S{sub max} - I, where S{sub max} is the maximum informational entropy. This conforms with the broadly accepted definition that entropy is the information loss. As informational entropy concept has been proved to be useful, it will be convenient to define an informational temperature, T{sub I}. This can be related to energy E and the informational entropy S. Information registration is a process of {Delta}I > 0, or {Delta}S < 0, and involves the energetically excited states ({Delta}E > 0). Therefore, T{sub I} is negative, and has the opposite sign of the conventional thermodynamic temperature, T. This concept is useful for clarifying the concepts of {open_quotes}order{close_quotes} and {open_quotes}disorder{close_quotes} of static structures and characterizing many typical information loss processes of self-organization.

• OSTI ID: 447565
• Report Number(s): CONF-960343--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

40 CHEMISTRY
66 PHYSICS
ENTROPY
ORDER-DISORDER TRANSFORMATIONS
RANDOMNESS
TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE
THERMODYNAMIC PROPERTIES