Sand dunes, fire and ocean waves could all be described the same way, although they're not as nicely localised as a hurricane. When you start looking, you realise that although they're not everywhere, they're relatively common. (The anatomy of a hurricane is actually considerably more complex than how I've described it here.) Hurricanes also possess something analogous to an organism's anatomy: the eyewall, the fast winds near the surface, and the drier air spiralling out at the top, must all be in place in order for the hurricane to persist - yet they are all generated by the processes that comprise the hurricane itself. Hurricanes thus have a rudimentary form of behaviour. Although the primary cause of a hurricane's motion is the prevailing wind, there is some evidence that when the prevailing wind is subtracted, hurricanes tend to move toward regions of warmer surface water, where the conditions are better for their "survival". Like organisms, hurricanes are subject to an analogue of death - they dissipate when they pass over land. Another important property of organisms is that their identity remains despite the continual replacement of all the atoms that make them up. The similarities between hurricanes and organisms do not stop there. This structure is low-entropy in part because it involves highly correlated motions of air molecules, i.e. Like a living organism, it increases the entropy of its environment (in this case by transporting heat from the warm ocean surface to the cold upper atmosphere) in order to maintain its own, localised low-entropy structure. The canonical counterexample is a hurricane.
(This goes for phase changes from gas to liquid and liquid to solid, also.) But there are plenty of other examples any reaction which reduces the number of molecules also tends to be entropy-reducing (even burning hydrogen: 2H 2 + O 2 -> 2H 2O converts three molecules to two).īottom line: local reduction in entropy is not in the least exclusive to life it is a general property of chemical systems which do not trap all heat that they produce. Solids essentially always have lower entropy than liquids. If there is no way to vent the heat, then overall entropy will go up (because of the temperature term T increasing, which will also increase S the direct dependence of S on T is not shown in this equation which assumes T is held constant), but any system that can lose heat to the outside-and that's basically any chemical reaction-can power its way to lower entropy by expending enough energy.Ī canonical example of an exothermic ( ∆H > 0) entropy-reducing reaction is crystallization. Any reaction where ∆G is negative will proceed-which could occur because entropy goes up, or could because energy is released (heating up the surroundings). Where H is the stored energy and S is the entropy. The fundamental equation is ∆G = ∆H - T∆S
ANTI ENTROPY FREE
Whether a reaction will occur or not depends on what is called Gibbs Free Energy.
Would all instances of processes that combat entropy in this type of scenario be considered life?Įdit: I want to tag this as entropy and universe, but I have insufficient points. The obvious exception is life as it is on Earth, and it seems like the necessary antecedent. I am having an extremely difficult time imagining a type of process where work is performed to create structures combatting the forces of entropy on a local scale.
And technically, the sun would be considered the source from whence the life-forms obtained the energy to perform the work. On Earth, we also have robots and technology that combat these same forces, but the work can ultimately be traced back to a life-form that initiated the process. Although on Earth, living organisms are also subject to entropy and die and decay into smaller, more primitive constituents. matter binds with itself to create structures. Then you have Earth, where we have living organisms that expend energy to (locally) combat the forces of entropy, i.e.
ANTI ENTROPY HOW TO
I don't exactly know how to phrase the question, but it seems like most forces in the universe are governed by physical processes where entropy is constantly increasing.
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