I was trying to understand what kind of macrostates and microstates you were thinking of when you said entropy would decrease when the asteroids were closer. Ma

I was trying to understand what kind of macrostates and microstates you were thinking of when you said entropy would decrease when the asteroids were closer. Maybe I should try to read one of those papers to see what they are about :-) But you may not be looking at the whole picture. Just because a system occupies a smaller volume doesn’t mean the entropy is lower. In classical thermodynamics a gas can be compressed while keeping the entropy constant (at least in theory). Edit: after a look at the first paper by Verlinde I still don’t know what are the microstates in this theory (they are related to string theory and intentionally left mostly undefined). But in any case your assumption that entropy decreases seems wrong by definition because an entropic force acts in the direction of increasing entropy.