The Physics of Life (ft. It's Okay to be Smart & PBS Eons!)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters point to it as an accessible pop-science introduction to entropy and the physics of life, including Jeremy England's work.
What it is
PBS Space Time, together with It's Okay to be Smart and PBS Eons, asks how a universe drifting toward disorder produced something as complex as life. It presents the idea that the laws of physics, through thermodynamics, may actually favor the emergence of life.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2020 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends efokschaner · 2021-10 · on “Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy”
This subject is discussed in the pop sci work of PBS spacetime [this video] with reference to articles and books if you're looking for more
Recommends donny2018 · 2023-12 · on “NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus”
>but life organizes Yes, and that's the interesting part. In the right circumstances, more entropy doesn't mean less complexity. Matter can become more complex and less entropy locally if that results in increase of total entropy in the system. This can occur, for example, if we have constant flow of concentrated energy on some local areas of the environment that continuously wants to spread out. Because the system as a whole "wants" to maximize its entropy as fast as it can, and it statistically "searches" for the shortest paths possible. This may result in natural occurrence of more and more complex molecules that dissipate heat more and more efficiently. It's like the planet's atmospheric
Cites julienchastang · 2020-04 · on “Entropy and Life”
I recently discovered the work of Jeremy England [1] on this topic on a PBS Space Time YouTube video [2] dedicated to the origins of life. England's work dates back a few years (2012) and seems like it was an exciting advancement in the field but was also controversial. Does anyone here know the status of this line of research? [1] [LINK] [2] [this video]