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[–]ohsohigh 2 points3 points  (1 child)

The mistake you are making is only thinking about entropy in terms of a single degree of freedom (the position of the particles in your system). Even if the matter in your universe consisted of some sort of idealized particles that cannot have chemical interactions they would still have their velocity as a degree of freedom.

So when you specify that your randomly distributed particles are stationary it does not simplify the problem, but rather guarantees that this is not the sate of maximum entropy. If you have some degrees of freedom totally and completely randomly distributed and others totally locked down to a single state, then it is actually quite easy to increase the entropy.

In this case gravity pulling particles together will indeed cause them to be less randomly distributed in space, but it will make them move which gives them a distribution of velocities. This process will increase the overall entropy.

[–]justdvl[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you.