this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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An explosion is pure entropy. It's high energy releasing to a low energy state in an uncontrolled manner
We climb down the energy slope very slowly to reverse entropy and create order
The universe is like us - temporary order emerges as it slides towards entropy
Perhaps another way to think of it is that we're a patch of localised order in an overall disordered universe
Or perhaps more eloquently:
we're the standing part of a harmonic fart
I don't understand this, but it sounds cool.
We're the fixed red dot in the superposition of the green and blue waves interfering with one other
But are we actually creating order? To maintain life's order, we are creating much more disorder somewhere else.
Life is but an entropy maximization machine.
On the overall scale of the universe? No, not even remotely close. On the local scale of the Earth, generally yes.
Well, as much as possible anyway. When considering mass alone, life is quite efficient.
According to Wolfram Alpha:
The sun produces 3.8 * 10^28^ watts.
A single human produces 104 watts (calculated through the average caloric intake assuming that intake ≈ energy consumption) through heat radiation.
Therefore:
1 kg of human converts 1.5 watt into heat.
1 kg of the sun converts 0.0002 watt into (heat) radiation.
And while I have nearly no understanding how entropy is calculated, from those values alone it seems like humans produce more entropy per kg than the sun. I'm pretty sure entropy is somewhat related to energy production though.
Yes, if you consider just a human-mass equivalent portion of the Sun then it's not doing much, but that's not really a useful comparison. We're talking about total net entropy here, not entropy per unit mass.
But yes, if it makes you feel any better, I'll concede that if you had octillions of people our total metabolic energy output would, in fact, be significantly higher than that of the Sun.
This raises the question of how many kg of human mass is required to start fusion and create a human star? How does fusion even work if you have a mix of different elements? Would the human star pulse in a cycle of collapsing until hydrogen fusion starts, exploding out until it stops and then collapsing again? Or would any fusion ignite enough to stop it from collapsing into a neutron star or black hole?
And if I've asked this question, does it mean xkcd has already attempted an answer? Or at least a comic that mentions it?
But how do you reverse entropy when the last star dies out?
INSUFFICIENT DATA
If only this was a response AI could give. I think it would solve a lot of the problems
https://xkcd.com/1448/
(apparent deadlink BTW). In answer to the question: slow and steady Hawking radiation from all the black holes, perhaps?
...just ripples in the carbon cycle, momentary standing waves until we lose coherence...
A single human may look organized, but collectively we are chaos