Quote:
Originally Posted by renormalised
One point.....you could even say that the blackbody radiation itself is a form of information and not necessarily the highest state of entropy you can have. Whilst it's for all intents and purpose about as disordered as you would normally get, a completely disordered state would by rights follow on in the 3rd Law of Thermodynamics (as you've previously mentioned), at a temp of absolute zero. But even then, we have no idea whether you can ever actually reach absolute zero, as you have the background quantum fluctuation of spacetime in which the particle rests. If at absolute zero, the order of a particle becomes zero or undefined, then you might as well say that quantum fluctuations in the spacetime field prevent total disorder. In actual fact, a definition of zero is a value and therefore can't be total disorder which implies nothing of any value (complete and utter non-existence). It would be better to say it was undefined, which also implies some hint of order to the system, no matter how vague or small it might be.
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The third law of thermodynamics in effect states that it is impossible to reach absolute zero temperature.
Another way of stating the third law is that the entropy of a system approaches zero as the temperature approaches absolute zero:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3rd_law_of_Thermodynamics
Absolute zero is the minimum possible entropy state. Pure thermal radiation (blackbody radiation) the maximum.
Hope this helps clear some things up
Have fun,
Doug