Jet Black

despite you not knowing anything much about the law, or the chemistry involved for that matter?

buckshot23

Maybe I am ignorant of the chemistry involved in these stories of abiogenesis. Then again I don't think there is much consensus on how life started anyways. Clay, crystals, sea vents :huh: we just don't know enough. As for the 2nd law where have I misrepresented it?

lngjon

You might find this article from Scientific American interesting:
http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpu...kononsense.pdf
'This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the second law. If it were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, becasue they, too are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts.
The second law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word.
More important, however, the second law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours light and heat onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun's nuclear fusion more tahn rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials'..

In other words, like most of the other arguments you've made, this one also has been debunked.

Oolon Colluphid

Dr. N. C. Asthana, your post is now in the EoG forum here.

premjan

The second law of thermodynamics doesn't make a lot of sense to me somehow. Are there any (physical / chemical) changes that are neutral in terms of entropy (i.e. entropy neither increases nor decreases) ? Is entropy increase deterministic or probabilistic?

OneWayTraffic

Unlike the bible Charles Darwin was quite explicit what he meant. He wrote in detail, he wrote in plain English, we have the original manuscripts and above all we have access to the physical evidence, living things, which he used to kick off what is now the unifying concept of biology. And it's quite clear that you don't know a Goddamn about it.

OneWayTraffic

When you study thermal physics for the first time the models used are basically stochastic in nature. However due to the huge number of molecules involved the end result is exceedingly deterministic in a similar vein to half-lifes.

And yes it is possible to run a process with no net entropy change IIRC The adiabatic expansion of gas satisfies this. However it's not possible to run this in a cycle. More careful expressions of the 2LoT state this though it's often left out for brevitys sake.

NB I studied physics a long time ago and I didn't refresh before writing this. It's possible I'm foggy on a few things.

premjan

It is kind of odd to have a stochastic law that works for many molecules but apparently does not have to work at the subatomic level. It is as if some level of description suddenly emerged (emergent behavior). Is there a more detailed explanation for this emergence?

FatherMithras

There's a word in Hebrew for disk and a word for sphere. Disc was used. Whoever is telling you about Hebrew seems to be an idiot or... nonexistent.

TNorthover

I don't think it's even that complicated. Simply that for one interaction entropy probably increases. If you've got loads of them then it almost certainly increases. Just law of large numbers really.