stormsewer | Entries tagged with entropy

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Enzymes are cool. There's lots of reasons why. Strings of amino acids that fold up automagically [1] into nanomachines that carry out plethorae of crazy amazing chemical reactions in water at room temperature, it's hard for me to imagine a more astounding piece of tech. We've still only scratched the surface in figuring out how that happens [2]; biology is over the river and through the woods beyond us in terms of technical chops.

But today (as on many days), I'm thinking about thermodynamics, particularly the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that whatever happens, the disorder of the universe must increase. Sooner or later the stars will poop out, the planets will 'splode, everything you love and cherish will be torn into its smallest constituent pieces [3].
( Click to see where I'm going with this. )

So, I subscribe to a mailing list about peak oil. Sometimes the people on there annoy me. Most of the time these days I just ignore that. But recently people on there were arguing about entropy and the second law of thermodynamics and how that plays out in the context of biological systems, which seem to go against the Law. However, no one there really seemed to know what they were talking about, and I find a lot of people generally have misunderstandings where this is concerned. But as a molecular biologist and as a human it's something I think about a lot. It's foundational to how the universe operates. For your edification, I present my involvement (thus far) in the conversation. ( Face your imminent heat death! )