From Avery Thompson at Popular Mechanics:
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the reason you can’t go back to the past. The universe, like an unmixed cup of coffee, started in an extremely ordered state. Over time, the universe mixed together and became less ordered, like what happens when you stir the coffee. Going back in time is unmixing; it can’t be done. The universe can’t be ‘unmixed’.
What this means, ultimately, is that time only exists because the Big Bang created a universe that started out ordered. More.
There is also a law of conservation of information that would be worth looking out.
Biologist Peter Medawar used it in the 1980s to refer to mathematical and computational systems that are limited to producing logical consequences from a given set of axioms or starting points, and thus can create no novel information (everything in the consequences is already implicit in the starting points). His use of the term is the first that I know, though the idea he captured with it is much older. Note that he called it the “Law of Conservation of Information” (see his The Limits of Science, 1984). – Dembski
See also: Data basic
Follow UD News at Twitter!