Does the "heat death" make life possible?

Great Debates
1

Creationists get into trouble when they say that such complex order as life in a universe governed by disorder must be deliberate, an act of God. One thing that is pointed out to them is that entropy represents the statistical tendency toward disorder, not a rigid law somehow violated by every occurrence of order.

I’ve noticed something that is not what Creationists claim, yet it doesn’t seem to be acknowledged by science that I have been able to find. It could seem outlandish, yet with a little examination it appears irrefutable to me that evolution and life are in fact dependent on processes and conditions which by definition qualify as disorder. This even includes the ultimate state of cosmic disorder called the heat death in which it is assumed that all viable energy within the universe will have been expended.

I want to mention that more than once I’ve been taken for a Creationist, and more than once people have assumed that I am one of these people who apparently do not believe that earth has limited resources, or who think that things like overpopulation, ozone depletion, pollution, and global warming are not real threats. Such assumptions are as far off-base as they could possibly be. On a science message board a man in England became livid at what I suggested. Somehow I guessed that he was a teacher. To be exact it turned out that he was a high school science teacher. Eventually he did an abrupt about face and declared that I was correct, yet he was no less hostile than he had been before. A number of people with a deeper understanding of science, such as a science writer I conversed with online and a friend who teaches astronomy, were surprised by my observation, but they did see my point.

In the unauthorized collection of essays, The Theory of Everything, Stephen Hawking illustrates how the statistical tendency toward disorder demonstrates the arrow of time with a water glass falling off a table to shatter on the floor. He shows how this demonstrates time’s directional arrow, time being a one way street, in that the glass will not reform up on the table like a film run in reverse.

It’s established in the scientific picture that stars produce the stuff that earth and life are made of. Stars are essentially immense hydrogen reactors. Hydrogen burning in a star can become oxygen as well as helium, and helium can be burned into carbon. The progression of star fuel, hydrogen, into these other substances, is the aging of the star. As the star is comprised of less and less hydrogen fuel and more of these substances, it is progressing toward what occurs when a red giant star goes nova and explodes, dispersing the stuff that life is formed from. Apply the arrow of time. Anything in a star that is no longer hydrogen fuel, such modified hydrogen as oxygen, helium, and carbon, will not revert into hydrogen fuel any more than a shattered water glass will reform up on the table. The stars that go nova also will not revert into the stars they had been. While earth could conceivably be swept into a new star form during a future nova, the stuff of which earth is made will not un-burn or un-explode, and happens to provide the basis for carbon-based life forms such as ourselves.

Mixing is disorder. In the book, Chaos, James Gleick gives the example of a swimming pool with ink on one side and water on the other divided by a barrier. Remove the barrier and the pure water and ink will mix together into a disordered mess. In The Theory of Everything, Hawking gives the example of two types of molecules in a box, again, separated by a barrier. Simply remove the barrier and the two types of molecules in separate ordered states will mix together into one disordered mess. They will also not separate and reorder themselves. What if hydrogen and oxygen mix together? That’s how we get water, which, like carbon, is very handy for such life forms as ourselves.

My thinking is that ordered energy forms of the star and of the hydrogen and oxygen are lost, but that these ordered states must be lost, and become disordered, before new more complex forms of order can arise.

I became curious about topsoil. Fertile topsoil is formed through similar processes to soil erosion. In the latter case that this is disorder is apparent. What about when manure, ashes, and plants and animals decompose and mix into fertile life-sustaining soil? For dust art thou, and unto dust shalt thou return. The individual plants and animals will not reform but will sustain future generations of flora and fauna, which can then revert into soil.

Apoptosis is also known as programmed cell death. Our body replaces in the area of a million cells a second. If it does not do this as it should the result can be cancer. When, on the other hand, cells die more rapidly than they should it causes strokes and such diseases as Alzheimer’s. The cells that die don’t come back into existence like a shattered glass reforming on a table. Like the brake pads on a car, the cells must be replaced with new cells. Life barters with entropy, in the cycle of soil and plants and animals, and in the life, reproduction, and death of cells in our bodies.

Evolution itself demonstrates time’s arrow. Cells live and die within complex organisms that live and die within species that carry on, adapt, and evolve into new species, or become extinct. In the case of human beings, individuals rise and fall within cultures that carry on, evolve, or die out. So I don’t expect to awake tomorrow as one of my Celtic ancestors or as an Australopithecus or a pro simian or a lung fish, or maybe even as part of a long dead star, any more than Hawking’s shattered glass will reform on the table from which it fell.

Heat loss is considered by definition to be entropy. Apply this to the fact that the death of stars is a loss of viable energy in the universe and a drop in temperature on a cosmic scale. The death of stars is a progression toward the hypothetical heat death of the universe. When standing before a mirror, consider the former temperature of the air around you as well as the walls and floor and ceiling and of the mirror, and, of course, of you, yourself. A great deal of heat loss, entropy, and disorder factor into that moment. The fact that all forms are finite, from shattered water glasses to exploding stars, makes evolution and life possible. Would you rather reside at room temperature, or on the surface of a star? If the heat death scenario is accurate, one result of this eventuality can be seen in your reflection. Organic processes also happen to be the heat death in progress.

While it seems to strike many as counter intuitive, I don’t believe that I am the only person to make this connection, yet I can’t find any acknowledgment of it. You might think it would make an interesting aside when addressing disorder and the proposed heat death. Why does no one make any mention of this?
I have two thoughts about why that might be. One is that in reductionism there is a tendency to view things as isolated occurrences; nature as the sum of it’s parts. Stars, while undergoing the entropic process of aging, happen to produce the stuff that life is made of. While succumbing to entropy in the form of a nova, they happen to disperse that life stuff. In addition to this, if one is to view all of these events as disconnected happenstance, complexity and life can occur in a finite universe. Perhaps to make this connection would threaten an underlying bias in reductionism against any view of order as other than a purely random occurrence. I would not say that this observation is proof that a higher power is at work in nature, but I think it qualifies as an argument for the fine tuning of our universe and it does lend itself to the possibility that nature is more than purely random. Is what is classified as a statistical tendency toward disorder also a statistical tendency toward complexity that makes evolution possible, or maybe even inevitable? Is that why I never find any mention of this aspect of entropy?

2

I don’t see how your observation is making the connection between entropy and the self-organizing molecules of life.

Or did I miss something?

3

Let me paraphrase what I think you’re saying. Hot stars are an example of low entropy; heat death high entropy; but life exists in neither, but in between the two; is that part of what you’re saying?

I’ve thought of life as a process to expel entropy to obtain low entropy locally. (The “expelled entropy” could be literally shit!)

One interesting point you don’t mention, but may support your argument, concerns time’s arrow itself. The laws of physics are mostly the same independent of time’s direction, so if one is agnostic about time’s arrow, a low-entropy state is anomalous and thus an argument for Special Creation!

4

I’ve heard it said that life exists between order and chaos, leaning towards chaos. A perfect crystal lattice is dead & immobile; as are the randomly bouncing molecules of boiling water. Simple cyclic phenomenon like tornadoes or a ticking clock are neither static order nor fully random chaos, but too simple to be life. Life is composed of active substances, just barely holding together; more disorderly and unpredictable than a tornado, but still not random like molecules of boiling water bouncing about.

As for a more directly entropy related example, among other things, life features the controlled, exploited dissipation of energy. A fire and an animal both take substances, combine them with oxygen to produce combustion products & heat; but life channels and controls the process to do work and create complexity even as the overall system follows the downward path of entropy.

5

Thanks for the replies. I thought it was pretty clear but perhaps not. Heat loss is entropy. The death of a star is heat loss. Earth, life, and you and I are what was once extremely hot star stuff. We are cooled star stuff from dead stars. In that respect we are by definition entropy and, I believe, even the heat death of the universe underway, even as we are complexity and evolution at work. Would you rather reside at room temperature or on the surface of a star?

6

Humans and Earth in general aren’t good examples of high entropy. Entropy is a measure of possible microstates. A pot of boiling water has a higher entropy than a cube of ice because each of the atoms in the boiling water are more mobile and can be in many different states. So the whole system of boiling water has many possible states it can be in, relative to the ice cube, in which the atoms are pretty still.

Life is a very specialized organization of atoms, and therefore has low entropy. A human isn’t very likely to spring up out of nowhere from a random assortment of atoms. Earth can be decreasing its entropy because it has an energy source, the sun, which is increasing its own entropy faster. So the entropy of the sun-Earth system, and the universe as a whole, is increasing.

The heat death of the universe refers to a state where all the stars have burned out, and there are no more particles or matter to speak of. Black holes have long since sucked everything up, and then evaporated into radiation. The whole universe is just a bath of radiation, and thus can’t form any complex structures. So photons continually bounce around off each other in many different ways, and the system is completely chaotic, with maximum entropy.

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Septimus. Yes. You have the idea. =) “Let me paraphrase what I think you’re saying. Hot stars are an example of low entropy; heat death high entropy; but life exists in neither, but in between the two; is that part of what you’re saying?”

Yumblie.
“The heat death of the universe refers to a state where all the stars have burned out.” Yes,it is. Earth and life are also the result of dead stars and thus of the cooling of the universe in progress. It’s like getting where you want to go in a car, and the gradual depletion of the gas tank en route is the price in entropy that you pay for the travel provided by the car. The death of stars is the depletion of the cosmic gas tank, and without that process, which is entropy, we could not exist.

And, right, the sun provides energy to the earth. Our nearest star is a third generation star, one that has in essence died and reformed twice. I am going to guess that it is then not quite as hot or bright as it would have been in its earlier incarnations, which again is cooling and entropy, but also happens to make it the right temperature to sustain life.

8

Gotta study this a lot more before giving a “yea” or “nay”…but a comment is in order.

You would do your argument great good if you removed the “burning” references.

There is no burning going on in stars…it is nuclear fusion at work, not oxidation.

9

Here’s a literature search on the phrase “nuclear burning” in astrophysics paper titles. I think its safe to say using the term burning to the consumption of fuel by fusion is in pretty wide use.

10

For a very interesting and fairly exhaustive treatment of this idea, I recommend the book “At Home in the Universe” by Stuart Kauffman.

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If the previous link was too technical:

http://home.att.net/~jamspsu84/ttocentropy.html

13

Call it burning. Call it fusion. Heat loss is by definition entropy. The death of stars is cosmic heat loss and the heat death in progress. It also makes life possible. As I say with this from time to time, would you rather reside at room temperature or on the surface of a star? Earth and life are all made of stuff that was formerly hydrogen fuel in stars.

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DCnC: Not sure what you’re getting at with the links. On a cosmic scale the death of stars is the heat death underway. The stuff of those dead stars then goes on to do other things but it is the expenditure of heat and energy in the cosmos in something of the manner that expenditure of fuel in a gas tank takes you where you’re going. Life as we know it cannot exist at so high an energy level and temperature as a star.

16

Der Trihs: “A fire and an animal both take substances, combine them with oxygen to produce combustion products & heat; but life channels and controls the process to do work and create complexity even as the overall system follows the downward path of entropy.”

Yes. Life is sometimes referred to as “slow fire.” Stars are sometimes called “slow bombs.”

17

I’m not sure I understand the “connection” you’re making.

You appear to be drawing a direct correlation between two basically unrelated events. Your conclusion that, to paraphrase, all particles that make up life as we know it originates from the death of stars, therefore we cannot exist without the death of stars, is a fallacy of logic. Yes, the existence of life owes itself to the presence of energy, and that energy has to come from somewhere, and in our case that energy happens to come from the Sun, which happens to be a star which is, in the cosmic sense of time, “dying,” in the process expending energy in the form of light, heat and radiation. So yes, in a roundabout way, in that sense, you are correct. But to state that life cannot exist without heat death in the manner you describe would seem to imply that the two are hand-in-hand, that heat death=life. Please correct me if I am reading you wrong, I would really like to understand what you are getting at here.

18

I’m still having trouble following your reasoning on this part. I get the whole idea behind high entropy stars forging heavier elements in their cores, going nova or supernova and spreading these elements essential for life across space. If planets happen to finally form around a stable star, and life happens to arise there; great. But how are these occurrences not chaotic and random?

19

Hey, DCnC. There are many respects in which processes defined as entropy make life possible as I have illustrated. The bottom line of it though which you failed to mention above is simply this: Everything that earth and life is made of was once in the form of stars, according to the scientific picture. The death and cooling of stars is the heat death in progress, but earth, life, and you and I are also the cooled stuff of dead stars. So the death and cooling of stars is the heat death in progress and it is also required for our existence.

20

I’m afraid I’m just not seeing the point of the point you’re trying to make. You’re saying that you, me, dogs, cats, birds, water, dirt, butterflies and everything else are made up of particles that at one point in time were part of a star, and through the process of heat death those particles became you, me, dogs, cats, etc., therefore without the death of stars the Earth and life as we know it cannot exist. Is that basically it in a nutshell? If so, yes you are correct. However, sounds to me that the implication is that dead stars=life, which, while in a certain way of looking at it may be technically true, it completely ignores the myriad variables in between the separate events of the death of a star and the formation of life.

I guess I’m either not grasping what exactly you are asking, or it’s gone over my head.