Rede, that was an interesting link.
It ends with: "When the universe begins to contract and the cosmological arrow reverses direction, there will be no solid direction for the thermodynamic arrow to point in, since entropy could not increase much more."
How does one square that with the fact that such contraction would constitute gravitational collapse, which should cause entropy to increase?
I think the answer is in the preceding sentence:
"However, by the time the rate of expansion of the universe falls below critical speed and the universe's own matter begins to pull in on itself, all the stars will have burnt out, galaxies will have collapsed, and protons and neutrons will have decayed into radiation and photons; basically, the ultimate state of disorder (or very close to ultimate).
When the universe begins to contract and the cosmological arrow reverses direction, there will be no solid direction for the thermodynamic arrow to point in, since entropy could not increase much more."
It seems the author is telling us that gravitational collapse would make little difference in those conditions.
