To me that’s more of an emergent property of large numbers of particles moving from higher to lower energy states. Like temperature is just the velocity of an atom when you have lots of atoms moving and interacting.
I’m not sure that’s quite right in the sense that entropy is still meaningful on the level of individual particles—phenomena like proton decay, for example. But yeah, fundamentally it’s an emergent property from the way energy works, and on a grand scale that tendency is a way to view time.
A proton isn’t an individual particle but made up of quarks. If a proton decays (which hasn’t been observed) it’s still a transition from its component quarks to lower energy particles.
To me that’s more of an emergent property of large numbers of particles moving from higher to lower energy states. Like temperature is just the velocity of an atom when you have lots of atoms moving and interacting.
I’m not sure that’s quite right in the sense that entropy is still meaningful on the level of individual particles—phenomena like proton decay, for example. But yeah, fundamentally it’s an emergent property from the way energy works, and on a grand scale that tendency is a way to view time.
A proton isn’t an individual particle but made up of quarks. If a proton decays (which hasn’t been observed) it’s still a transition from its component quarks to lower energy particles.