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Introduction
Human wonder:
Who are we?
Where do we come from?
Are we alone?
Energy
- Energy is the lifeblood of the universe.
- The story of everything that was, is, or will be, is the story of energy transformations
- Ex. Niagara Falls, gravitational energy to kinetic energy to thermal energy
- But what is energy? No one knows, exactly.
- One of the great mysteries
- Einstein discovered two clues:
o First clue: E=mc^2
o All forms of energy have mass
o A hot cup of coffee (thermal energy) has more mass than the same cup of
coffee, cold! (thermal energy has mass)
o Conversely, mass itself has energy
o Life on Earth survives by literally eating the sun! (photosynthesis and production
of glucose)
o Second clue Gab + Agab = (8piG/c^4)Tab
o Mass-energy is inextricably woven into the very fabric of space & time itself
(Interstellar movie)
o This is a powerful clue in our search for a unified theory of everything
- Remarkably, it appears as if energy is conserved:
o If energy decreases here, it increases there so that total = constant
o Energy can move or charge form but it cannot be created/destroyed
o If this is true, the universe contains the same amount of energy as it was before
the big bang
o Energy is eternal, we cant use or waste energy, energy will never run out
- It doesnt run out, it runs down
o Whats running out is useful energy (free energy)
o If the universe were to reach equilibrium (no gradients of temperature, pressure,
density), energy could no longer flow/transform. Lifeblood would freeze
o The quantity of energy is constant, but the quality continually decreases.
o High quality/ ordered energy -> Lower quality/ disordered energy
o disorder = entropy
o The entropy/ disorder of the universe is continually increasing
o Called second law of thermodynamics
- So what?
o The flow to disorder is the force that animates living organisms, and possibly
created life in the first place.
o Living organisms do not consume energy. Energy in = Energy out (Burger in, body
heat out)
o They consume order, so as to maintain their own high degree of order, against
their tendency towards disorder and death.
o DNA sequence is ordered and disorder can cause human to have arm coming out
of forehead for example.
- Entropy
o Diffusion of particles is an example of entropy/ disorder increasing.
o Diffusion happens spontaneously: there are simply many more ways for the
particles to be spread out, than localized. This spreading continues until
equilibrium is reached.
o Thermal energy spontaneously flows from hot to cold, spreading out the energy
amongst more particles, until thermal equilibrium is reached and net energy flow
ceases (death)
o Summary: The Entropy/ disorder of the universe spontaneously increases, on
balance
o loophole: Disorder can decrease locally (order increase locally) provided
disorder increases more elsewhere, so that the net disorder increases.
o This is how life is possible: living organisms spontaneously extract order from
(the flow to) disorder. This is the essence of life
o Humans have learned to construct machines that do exactly the same thing
- Order from disorder
o Machines exist all around us that spontaneously extract order from (the flow to)
disorder
o Thermal energy spontaneously flows from hot to cold, increasing the
disorder of the universe.
o Along the way it heats the gas in the cylinder. Hot gas atoms bombard the
piston, which absorbs only right-moving kinetic energy ( a simple one-way
valve)
o Some of the disordered KE (random, thermal motion of the gas atoms) is
converted into ordered KE (all the atoms in the car moving the same way)
o This ordered/high quality energy is used to move people, build cities, and create
order of all kinds, but must be accompanied by greater destruction of order
elsewhere.
o Early on, humans mastered burning fuels to produce heat (wood, coal, oil, etc.) ,
but only recently figured out how to burn fuels to create order. -> industrial
revolution
- A human is the same sort of machine:
o It takes in high quality/ordered energy (food)
o It burns it and expels low quality/disordered energy (excrement & body heat)
o In the process, it constructs highly ordered materials (DNA, cells, etc.) and
extracts highly ordered energy for locomotion, consciousness, etc.
o Once you have the machine, you just need to feed it; it will function
spontaneously
o What animates living organisms is simply the spontaneous dispersion of energy
& particles from more ordered to less ordered forms
o A human consumes order to maintain its relatively low entropy/highly ordered
form
- Human as Piston Engine?
o ATP is the universal energy currency of all life on Earth. Animals, plants, etc.
o It provides the high quality energy needed for synthesis of proteins and
membranes, all cell movements and functions, cellular division, etc.
o How is it generated?
o Electrochemical battery! E.g.: Drop a cube of iron (Fe) into a copper (Cu) sulfate
solution.
o Electrons spontaneously flow from the Fe to the Cu2+ ions, in random directions
o IDEA: Force electrons to flow in one direction only, exactly life we extracted
ordered KE in the piston engine! Then use electric current to charge ADP up to
ATP!
o Nature has evolved a similar battery, using glucose & oxygen:
Glucose gets snipped into two pyruvate ions (act life Fe to donate
electrons)
Oxygen has a strong affinity for electrons (acts life Cu2+)
The spontaneous flow of electrons from pyruvate to oxygen (burning
sugar) is used to charge ADP to ATP!
- The Complexity Problem
o Problem: The ADP->ATP energy machinery is very complex!
The electron flow drives a proton pump that forces protons across a
membrane, creating a proton gradient that stores potential energy (like a
battery) for later use.
This store of energy is tapped by allowing protons to flow back across the
membrane through a machine called the ATP synthase.
o The electric field in the proton gradient accelerates the protons to large KE. They
collide with angled vanes attached to a shaft, forcing it to rotate.
o Life a rotary motor, the turning shaft mechanically converts ADP to ATP. Its very
much a physical gears and wheels machine, not traditional chemistry!
o This type of energy machinery is universal to all life, as universal as the genetic
code itself.
o It exists inside mitochondria in cells
- Spontaneous Emergence of Order/Complexity
o The entire history of the universe if FILLED with precisely this process.
o The universe began in a hot dense state (Big Bang) with (almost) no
order/structure. Ever since then it has been expanding and cooling, causing
various structures to condense out.
o At each stage, local order/structure increases, but net order decreases.
o Example. Snowflakes
o Ice is more ordered than water vapor.
o But in forming, thermal energy is released, creating much more disorder in the
surrounding air than the emergent order of the snowflake.
o Example: proteins, life ATP synthase
o When ATP synthase is spontaneously created by the ribosome machine, with
instructions from DNA, the disorder created >> the local order created
o But how did the complex machinery that builds proteins arise in the first place?
(one of the biggest questions that humans asked for the longest time)
- Deeper understanding of the second law of thermodynamics
o 1994: Denis Evans & Debra Searles proved: The second law is not strictly true. In
microscopic systems, the entropy of an isolated system can fluctuate, mostly
increasing, but sometimes decreasing
o After 1994: Ever deeper developments in understanding the physics of the
second law
o 2013-2015: Jeremy England, MIT biophysicist, applied this to living organisms:
In doing so, England may have taken us a significant step closer to
explaining the origin of lifes complex
May have answered, why is there life?
o Idea: Dissipation-driven adaptation of matter
o England: You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for
long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant.
o England: Under the right circumstances, which arent rare at all, matter tends
naturally toward greater organization, complex structures and adaptive
behavior, making life a likely, even inevitable result of physics.
o Complex molecules, ever better at eating energy in the environment, may
emerge spontaneously!? ATP synthase, too?
o The idea may subsume evolution, and go further: explain origin of life. Pre-life
adaptation to the environment!
- SCI 207
o This is one thread in the Life section of SCI 207
Life
Universe
Everything
o We then discuss the nature and possible origins of the universe-> roots of life go
all the way back to the big bang.
o And finally, we go even deeper