[Keith_McClary]

A New Physics Theory of Life

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')rom the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life.
...
Using Jarzynski and Crooks’ formulation, he derived a generalization of the second law of thermodynamics that holds for systems of particles with certain characteristics: The systems are strongly driven by an external energy source such as an electromagnetic wave, and they can dump heat into a surrounding bath. This class of systems includes all living things. England then determined how such systems tend to evolve over time as they increase their irreversibility. “We can show very simply from the formula that the more likely evolutionary outcomes are going to be the ones that absorbed and dissipated more energy from the environment’s external drives on the way to getting there,” he said. The finding makes intuitive sense: Particles tend to dissipate more energy when they resonate with a driving force, or move in the direction it is pushing them, and they are more likely to move in that direction than any other at any given moment.
...
Self-replication (or reproduction, in biological terms), the process that drives the evolution of life on Earth, is one such mechanism by which a system might dissipate an increasing amount of energy over time. As England put it, “A great way of dissipating more is to make more copies of yourself.”
...
Besides self-replication, greater structural organization is another means by which strongly driven systems ramp up their ability to dissipate energy.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', 'O')ne could stretch this concept a bit further to suggest that human civilisation is just part of nature's way (or fundamental physical law) of "capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat."

[SeaGypsy]

As long as you are ok with fulfilling the purpose of life becoming ever increasing efficient movement towards heat death- (the end of all life).

[Newfie]

Well, if anyone cares, I'll do a search and find out where I proposed this about two years ago.

Told ya so!

[Timo]

I'm good with that equation for HOW life occurred and started from mere elements, but the "meaning of life"????? I think this equation pretty much eliminates any fundamental purpose for us, or any other life form, in being here. We are here to dissipate heat. In the context of AGW, FAIL!!!!!!! Then again, maybe our purpose is to figure out how to survive our own ignorance.

[Rod_Cloutier]

Learn to be cautious with what other people discover.

In 1958 Robert Monroe discovered that certain sounds can allow you to have an out of body experience. I tried his discovery last night at this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... ATj0#t=111

(I did not get an out of body experience; but I did get an out of this world headache)

[Newfie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Timo', 'I')'m good with that equation for HOW life occurred and started from mere elements, but the "meaning of life"????? I think this equation pretty much eliminates any fundamental purpose for us, or any other life form, in being here. We are here to dissipate heat. In the context of AGW, FAIL!!!!!!! Then again, maybe our purpose is to figure out how to survive our own ignorance.

[rockdoc123]

been many decades since my pure physics learnings but is this at odds or does it agrree with Gibbs free energy equations? As I remember it Gibbs Free Energy delta G is a product of change in enthalpy minus the change in entropy. All reactions tend to go from a state of higher free energy to a state of lower free energy (as i remember it) so how does this work with this new set of equations?

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rockdoc123', 'b')een many decades since my pure physics learnings but is this at odds or does it agrree with Gibbs free energy equations?

[Newfie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rockdoc123', 'b')een many decades since my pure physics learnings but is this at odds or does it agrree with Gibbs free energy equations? As I remember it Gibbs Free Energy delta G is a product of change in enthalpy minus the change in entropy. All reactions tend to go from a state of higher free energy to a state of lower free energy (as i remember it) so how does this work with this new set of equations?

[Sons of the Elohim]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')ts just exactly the same thing, entropy. All this guy is saying new(ish) is that life organizes itself to extract energy from a higher state and release it at a lower state.

[Newfie]

Hopefully without embarrassing myself.......

Energy gets locked up in higher order structures, such as coal or oil. It is pretty stable there and can last a long time. The second law of thermodynamics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law ... modynamics

basically says things always go from a more ordered, or higher energy state to a lower energy state. Because of this law it is the fate of the universe to eventually just sort of fade away.

So high energy, ordered stuff (all those neat hydrocarbon molecules) just sit there until something comes along to break up the order, remove the hydrogen from the carbon. In short to "burn" the energy.

Life requires energy. Life "eats" or "burns" energy in order to create some temporary highly organized form..an amoeba, a rat, you and me. But these life forms ( and our works) are only temporary. We create a brief flasjph of high order, but we eat up more ordering the process than we are left with at the end. Then we die, our buildings burn an rot, our cities decay.

This always works out that we use more energy, and create more entropy, than if we had never existed.

I know a lump of coal does not look like a highly ordered and energy rich bit. But it is, compared to the pile of ash it becomes. We always make that transition occur sooner rather than later.

To go a step further, Uranium is highly organized and decaying at a slow rate. It takes a highly adapted critter to " burn " uranium. But we do.

In fact, you can pretty well say that all we do is run around and incinerate the earth. It is what we do, therefore It is our reason for bring.

Hope that is clear. Some strange ideas there.

[Serial_Worrier]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'H')opefully without embarrassing myself.......


Life requires energy. Life "eats" or "burns" energy in order to create some temporary highly organized form..an amoeba, a rat, you and me. But these life forms ( and our works) are only temporary. We create a brief flasjph of high order, but we eat up more ordering the process than we are left with at the end. Then we die, our buildings burn an rot, our cities decay.

Hope that is clear. Some strange ideas there.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Serial_Worrier', 'S')ome scientists estimate the Hoover Dam could last 100K years before it erodes away.

[sparky]

.
Why stop at the carbonated squishy things , this would apply to villages , towns , cities , megapolis
their "baths " would be their borders reticulated by the trade , administrative and military networks

The idea isn't even new ,
internal organization allow the capture of energy and the temporary suspension of entropy .

Monot , a Nobel prize,was writing about that in the 1960ies,
the hippies are going to love this ,
he mentioned that crystals can be considered alive , they seed as reproduction and have complex structure

[Newfie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Serial_Worrier', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'H')opefully without embarrassing myself.......


Life requires energy. Life "eats" or "burns" energy in order to create some temporary highly organized form..an amoeba, a rat, you and me. But these life forms ( and our works) are only temporary. We create a brief flasjph of high order, but we eat up more ordering the process than we are left with at the end. Then we die, our buildings burn an rot, our cities decay.

Hope that is clear. Some strange ideas there.

[sparky]

.
That's the whole point life is a temporary aberration of the laws of physic
as the ( mad ) German philosopher Nietzsche wrote
"life is a subset of death and a pretty rare one "
some juicy quotes , including the famous
"what doesn't kill us make us stronger"
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/autho ... zsche.html

[Newfie]

In that case you missed the point.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I remember learning some decades ago that DNA (the basic structure of all known life) is incredibly energy efficient (like FAR more efficient than anything people have come close to in their devices). Then I remember thinking that this probably is WHY DNA is the structure of life (it works well and carbon is abundant) -- since an organism clearly transforms things all its life to survive (i.e. metabolism, breathing, excreting, reproducing, etc) if it weren't efficient, it wouldn't be viable long term. (i.e. first rough climate patch, it dies off instead of surviving long enough to evolve to adapt).

I'm not sure this says anything fundamentally different -- it just expresses it in equations instead of as a concept.

This seems to me to be a specific aspect of the anthropic principle -- in a universe with our physical laws, life that isn't very efficient at energy exchange couldn't evolve to the point to muse about the subject.

-- edited for minor typo and spelling corrections.

[Tanada]

As I was just outside shoveling snow out of my driveway and having to pitch the snow up over the peak of the pile on the edge which now stands five feet high I got to thinking.

Entropy is the philosophical belief that things always grow less complex with time, yet here I was taking a blowing collection of very simple snow flakes and making them into an ever growing more complex more layered pile of mixed snow and ice fragments.

Just saying.