Entropy Balance in the Expanding Universe: A Novel Perspective

Abstract

We describe cosmic expansion as correlated with the standpoints of local observers’ co-moving horizons. In keeping with relational quantum mechanics, which claims that quantum systems are only meaningful in the context of measurements, we suggest that information gets ergodically “diluted” in our isotropic and homogeneous expanding Universe, so that an observer detects just a limited amount of the total cosmic bits. The reduced bit perception is due the decreased density of information inside the expanding cosmic volume in which the observer resides. Further, we show that the second law of thermodynamics can be correlated with cosmic expansion through a relational mechanism, because the decrease in information detected by a local observer in an expanding Universe is concomitant with an increase in perceived cosmic thermodynamic entropy, via the Bekenstein bound and the Laudauer principle. Reversing the classical scheme from thermodynamic entropy to information, we suggest that the cosmological constant of the quantum vacuum, which is believed to provoke the current cosmic expansion, could be one of the sources of the perceived increases in thermodynamic entropy. We conclude that entropies, including the entangled entropy of the recently developed framework of quantum computational spacetime, might not describe independent properties, but rather relations among systems and observers.