2min chapter

Why This Universe? cover image

14 - Why Does Time Move in One Direction?

Why This Universe?

CHAPTER

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

If you took a truly random configuration of atoms, there is a vanishingly small probability that it would make anything that can do all the complicated stuff that living organisms can do. And going off of that, if you think about the very specific arrangements of atoms that you need for something like you or me to exist, really, that's a really low probability arrangement. There are so many more ways that you can organize atoms to be a big clump of stuff than to be a human being or a dog or cat.

00:00
Speaker 2
And going off of that, if you think about the very specific arrangements of atoms that you need for something like you or me, Dan, to exist, any kind of life, really, that's a really low probability arrangement. There are so many more ways that you can organize atoms to be a big clump of stuff than to be a human being or a dog or cat.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean if you took a truly random configuration of atoms, there is a vanishingly small probability that it would make anything that can do all the complicated stuff that living organisms can do. I mean, even if you're talking about some simple single-celled or bacterium revirus or something, that's exceedingly unlikely that you could just throw stuff together and wind up with that. Anything that would be capable of processes like metabolism or any kind of processing of information, this has to be an incredibly low entropy state.
Speaker 2
And not only that, but if you think about it, it also seems like as humans, we possess the power to lower the entropy of a given system. After all, I can pick up all the dice and set them to phase one, thus putting this whole die system in a lower entropy state. Does this mean that humans violate the second law of thermodynamics? Well, no, we don't. So there's a cap that I didn't mention, which is that for me to be able to go pick up those dice and move them around, I have to be exerting my own energy. And the energy it takes me to do that ends up radiating in the environment in the form of heat. So even though I can lower the entropy of the die system, the entropy of the entire system with me and the environment included still has to increase.
Speaker 1
So even if we can use energy to artificially lower the entropy of some system, we're actually creating more entropy in the overall surrounding environment. So the total entropy of the closed system always goes up or stays the same following the second law.

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