The Entropy of a Black Hole Is Proportional to Its Surface Area

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The entropy of something is proportional to its area, not its volume. We absolutely have very ordinary, non-gravitational, non-black hole examples of that. That's surprising because if you take our condensed matter system, remember I said it was in its lowest energy state,. Its lowest energy state is not its maximum entropy state. You can't fit more entropy into any region of space than a black hole has.

Welcome to the March 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number — based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good — and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!

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