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Is life defying the Second Law?

By the Second Law of thermodynamics, which is observable in our Earth’s environment and we believe it’s a cosmic law, disorder (entropy) grows unrelentingly, every order (structure) decays. Any system, any organized matter left alone for long enough becomes sameness. The ultimate end is a random distribution of all matter, all atoms and molecules in a thermal bath of uniform temperature.

The growth of an organism creates and maintains an order and structure. So, is life defying the Second Law? No, the process of living, like all other processes involving matter, raises the total amount of entropy in the Universe. On balance, to stay alive, the organism has to consume more order than it creates - just compare food of any living entity with its excrement. Order grows locally even as it declines universally.

However, in the spirit of Second Law, one would not expect life to be possible, to originate, to persist. Who allowed the growth of local order on the expense of ‘others’? And why?

passiflora : the beauty of order

 2010-09-12 

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