Hal,
I agree. It seems clear to me that the urge of nature to increase the
entropy of the universe is the engine behind everything we see happening,
including life and evolution. Why did life occur? Why, to increase the
entropy of the universe!
How did life occur? Well, you mix some chemicals together and cook them
and proteins appear. Then the proteins assemble themselves into RNA, which
starts replicating. It sounds so simple - why, I wonder, haven't we been
able to do it ourselves? Maybe if you did this a million times, varying the
recipe slightly each time, one of them WOULD work - in a sterile environment
which no longer exists on earth.
The entropy of the universe was zero or close to it at the moment of the
Big Bang, and approaches infinity as expansion makes the universe ever
larger and colder.
If the universe started contracting, its entropy would get smaller,
which nature doesn't allow in large-scale systems. This seems to me an
argument in support of perpetual expansion.
And where did this mysterious Big Bang come from? A "quantum
fluctuation of virtual particles" I'm told. What, exactly, does that mean?
Why? How can 10^119 particles at an extremely hot temperature originate
from nothing?
So many questions - so little time.
Norman
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hal Ruhl" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <everything-list@eskimo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2005 11:46 AM
Subject: Re: objections to QTI
Hi All:
In my view life is a component of the fastest path to heat death
(equilibrium) in universes that have suitable thermodynamics. Thus there
would be a built in "pressure" for such universes to contain life. Further
I like Stephen Gould's idea that complex life arises because evolution is a
random walk with a lower bound and no upper bound.
The above "pressure" will always quickly jump start life at the lower bound
in such universes by rolling the dice so to speak as much as necessary to
do so.
Hal Ruhl
