ldmitruk
Active Member
Hi all and Happy New Year.
Here's a rather interesting article from almost a year ago about thermodynamics and life first published in Quanta. The young scientist ,Jeremy England, has proposed that groups of atoms that are exposed to an external energy source such as sunlight and surround by a heat bath like an ocean or atmosphere will gradually itself to dissipate more energy. This means matter acquires an attribute needed by life in certain conditions. Now the idea is rather speculative but the article mentions there are already ideas of how test this in a lab. How cool is that. The article also has a good description of how the second law works and why life does not violate it as some creationist like to claim.
Salon has picked up on the article and is claiming it has creationists quaking in their boots.
Just as side note/disclaimer, Scientific America or Quanta is about the level of science journal I tend to read these days but at least I try, which more than you can say for some people on this board. However here's the preprint of Jeremy's article Statistical Physics of Adaptation for more in-depth reading on his research.
Cheers!
Edit: I did read the paper to try and grasp a bit of greater understanding.
Here's a rather interesting article from almost a year ago about thermodynamics and life first published in Quanta. The young scientist ,Jeremy England, has proposed that groups of atoms that are exposed to an external energy source such as sunlight and surround by a heat bath like an ocean or atmosphere will gradually itself to dissipate more energy. This means matter acquires an attribute needed by life in certain conditions. Now the idea is rather speculative but the article mentions there are already ideas of how test this in a lab. How cool is that. The article also has a good description of how the second law works and why life does not violate it as some creationist like to claim.
Salon has picked up on the article and is claiming it has creationists quaking in their boots.
Just as side note/disclaimer, Scientific America or Quanta is about the level of science journal I tend to read these days but at least I try, which more than you can say for some people on this board. However here's the preprint of Jeremy's article Statistical Physics of Adaptation for more in-depth reading on his research.
Cheers!
Edit: I did read the paper to try and grasp a bit of greater understanding.
