A LARGER ESTIMATE OF THE ENTROPY OF THE UNIVERSE
By Chas A. Egan, Charles H. Lineweaver. 2009
191 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Using recent measurements of the supermassive black hole (SMBH) mass function, we find that SMBHs are the largest contributor to the entropy of the observable universe, contributing at least an order of magnitude more entropy than previously estimated. The total entropy of the observable universe is correspondingly higher, and is Sobs = 3.1+3.0−1.7 × 10104 k. We calculate the entropy of the current cosmic event horizon to be SCEH = 2.6 ± 0.3 × 10122 k, dwarfing the entropy of its interior, SCEH int = 1.2+1.1−0.7 × 10103 k. We make the first tentative estimate of the entropy of weakly interacting massive particle dark matter within the observable universe, Sdm = 1088 ± 1 k. We highlight several caveats pertaining to these estimates and make recommendations for future work.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/583466139f589823781c96f3f9071b25e7b2f391
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Citations in the corpus
- DE SITTER MUSINGS (2012, background): “It can be naturally generalized (8)The entropy of the present day universe, including the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of supermassive black holes, is estimated around 10(104) (see [87] and references therein).”
- Generalized second law of thermodynamics in f(T) gravity (2012, result): “We ignore the contribution of radiation which is compatible with the observations [29].”