Tuesday 21 April 2015

Matter And Energy

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 7 April 2014:

A passage in James Blish's Black Easter and The Day After Judgment (London, 1972), pp. 173-17, is relevant to the discussion in the previous post. To paraphrase -

Baines: The conservation laws apply to matter and energy but demons are neither.

Satvje: They may be unified fields of electro-magnetico-gravitic energy with 100 per cent negative entropy.

Buelg: Completely negative entropy is impossible but stable negative entropy would be H(x)-Hy(x)=C+E.

Satvje: That would be eternal life.

Buelg: Eternal barring accidents. We ought to be able to disrupt the electromagnetic part of the system and thus to kill spirits.

However, I do not understand the equation.