Entropy of life increases as in any chemistry?

[minaras]

According to the common viewpoint, life is an open system that interacts with external energy. The mainstream viewpoint is that this causes a decrease in its entropy, enabling life to emerge on the first place and to sustain itself, thus avoiding chemical chaos. In return, the system releases entropy to its surroundings so that the 2^nd law of thermodynamics is not violated.

 

The common view that the origin of life is characterized by accumulation of order, as order means lower entropy.

 

However, the term order can be very subjective, as an object non involved in life such as a rolling stone can say that it sees no order or no meaning in living systems’ chemical reactions. Just chaotic chemistry. So lets just leave order on the side and calculate entropy changes directly.

 

Does the entropy in living systems actually increase or decrease? If it increases, is it doing so in a pattern that suggests an arbitrary system? Although I am not a physicist I will welcome suggestions on how to calculate changes in the entropy of life over time.

 

Here are some simple approaches: Forgive me for any mistakes…

1)Does the life-associated heat production increase or decrease over time and how? Can life-associated changes in temperature be calculated?

2)Since chemical systems with higher entropy are characterized by increased gas production, does a life-associated gas production increase over time? In a system of decreasing entropy, one would expect a declining life-associated gas production…

Any ideas:?

[studiot]

Are you writing an essay?

 

Personally I would avoid associating the terms entropy and order with life.

 

It is not clear whether life is a concrete (ie physical) thing or an abstract thing. I am not suggesting that life does not exist, only that you could be mixing the concrete and the abstract in some inappropriate way.

Edited August 30, 2015 by studiot

[minaras]

Life is an existing thing with measurable properties. Entropy is a real thing as well and can be calculated.I am only skeptical with the use of "order", especially for things we ourselves are involved, that makes them subjective issues and may lead to bias.

I think entropy in life systems should be calculated, in order to quide us to build theories. Its time to put some direct evidence-based facts in the science of "life and entropy".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And someone might say that if living beings are only a sum of complex chemical reactions then what prevents them from degrading into chemical chaos? For instance, if there is not a major adverse event or a catastrophic external factor, how can a human maintain its body structure at a viable state for nearly 100 years instead of spontaneously degrading towards a higher entropic state?

 

A possible answer lies in our inability to fully appreciate and comprehend big numbers.

I will explain.

Lets assume that human body everyday degrades towards a higher entropic state. Lets assume for this reason, that after each day, the body loses, lets say 100 thousand of chemical reactions. Suppose we have an 80 years old man. He has lived 29200 days. This means that he has lost nearly 3 billion reactions during his lifetime. If the total amount of chemical reactions he has in his body is, lets say 1 trillion, then after 80 years he will be composed of 997 billion reactions, which means virtually still 1 trillion. So the impact of the whole process on the chemical reaction count will be almost negligible.

[Strange]

Life is an existing thing with measurable properties. Entropy is a real thing as well and can be calculated.I am only skeptical with the use of "order", especially for things we ourselves are involved, that makes them subjective issues and may lead to bias.

 

Entropy is not subjective.

 

 

Its time to put some direct evidence-based facts in the science of "life and entropy".

 

What makes you think that there is no evidence and facts involved in this area of science?

 

And someone might say that if living beings are only a sum of complex chemical reactions then what prevents them from degrading into chemical chaos?

 

Because one of the definitions of life is that it is self-sustaining - i.e. maintains its separation from the environment.

 

A possible answer lies in our inability to fully appreciate and comprehend big numbers.

 

Your inability, perhaps.

 

I will explain.

 

I doubt it. You have never been able to expalin your ideas before.

 

Lets assume that human body everyday degrades towards a higher entropic state. Lets assume for this reason, that after each day, the body loses, lets say 100 thousand of chemical reactions. Suppose we have an 80 years old man. He has lived 29200 days. This means that he has lost nearly 3 billion reactions during his lifetime. If the total amount of chemical reactions he has in his body is, lets say 1 trillion, then after 80 years he will be composed of 997 billion reactions, which means virtually still 1 trillion. So the impact of the whole process on the chemical reaction count will be almost negligible.

 

Complete gibberish. You can't isolate and remove individual reactions.

Edited September 2, 2015 by Strange

[studiot]

Entropy is certainly quantifiable in finite systems.

 

I am not convinced that the same applies to 'life' or its properties.

 

Further, as Strange pointed out, all entropy behave is the same way, again this does not apply to all life.

 

Perhaps this is becasue entropy is a single well defined 'thing' that does not have 'properties' but life is a many faceted thing.

 

 

the body loses, lets say 100 thousand

 

How can a chemical reaction be lost?

 

The statement lacks clarity of meaning, again Strange has also picked this up.

[Essay]

Life is an existing thing with measurable properties. Entropy is a real thing as well and can be calculated.I am only skeptical with the use of "order", especially for things we ourselves are involved, that makes them subjective issues and may lead to bias.

I think entropy in life systems should be calculated, in order to quide us to build theories. Its time to put some direct evidence-based facts in the science of "life and entropy".

....

 

You might find some interesting points to support your ideas, or some additional information or interesting ideas that expand upon your own ideas, if you google "pedology entropy" as I just did:

...where I found this interesting and informative link:

 

"The Kolmogorov entropy of the pre- and post- agricultural landscapes...."

 

Soils have many similarities to living systems, as they point out in "The search for a new Paradigm in Pedology", and so they talk about various aspects of entropy, as well as ergodic theory, which you also might find helpful.

 

~

[minaras]

 

You might find some interesting points to support your ideas, or some additional information or interesting ideas that expand upon your own ideas, if you google "pedology entropy" as I just did:

...where I found this interesting and informative link:

 

"The Kolmogorov entropy of the pre- and post- agricultural landscapes...."

 

Soils have many similarities to living systems, as they point out in "The search for a new Paradigm in Pedology", and so they talk about various aspects of entropy, as well as ergodic theory, which you also might find helpful.

 

~

Thank you Essay!! I will

 

 

Here are some more objections:

 

 

 

Question: If we let alone a cell in an isolated box, the result will eventually be a chemical mixture and not the organized cell. The final disordered mixture is more entropic than the the organized cell. Doesn’t this prove that lowering entropy is a hallmark of life and every organism spends an amount of energy to increase its order??

 

Answer: Not necessarily. The story of any individual living being actually is a journey towards gradual decay into disordered chemistry. In the beginning it’s a zygote in which so much information is disclosed about future events, patterns, etc in a very small space. So we can say that a zygote has less entropy compared to later stages. This entropy gradually increases as we become infants, childs, teenagers, adults, etc, because less and less information is carried over time…

A simple cell in isolation will indeed decay quickly, but don’t forget that cells never exist in isolation, and higher organisms are much more complex and they interact with external energy. So the fact that they don’t instantly decay doesn’t necessarily mean that they use energy to decrease their entropy. Never underestimate our inability to fully comprehend the value of huge numbers.

I will explain:

Lets assume that a human body everyday degrades towards a higher entropic state. Lets assume for this reason, that after each day, the body loses, lets say 100 thousand of chemical reactions. Suppose we have an 80 years old man. He has lived 29200 days. This means that he has lost nearly 3 billion reactions during his lifetime. If the total amount of chemical reactions he has is, lets say 1 trillion, then after 80 years he will be composed of 997 billion reactions, which means virtually still 1 trillion. So the impact of the whole process on the chemical reaction count will be almost negligible.

Of course, if we stop giving him food, he will degrade faster, but this is an example how can life can be compatible with a gradual loss of entropy.

[studiot]

This is the same nonsense you posted in post 3 but you have not answered any of the comments by Strange or myself.

 

 

If we let alone a cell in an isolated box,

 

For your information, systems identified with entropy and/or energy tend to a state of minimum energy or maximum entropy.

Sometimes these objective coincide, sometimes they conflict as with you single cell.

 

Cells obtain nutrients by diffusion, which is driven by increasing entropy.

However this is not at the cost of energy expenditure, as you suggest.

Cell potential energy actually increases as the diffusion sets up a reverse pressure.

[minaras]

And what does this mean for the order of the system you mentioned?

[minaras]

Life in the beginning was limited spatially into a small chemical system, interacting with external energy. It was thus, a unique and separate chemical system. Through the eons, that system got larger and more complex, and it created us that we live inside it, as a part of it. However, for an outside observer, life nowadays came from, and remains exactly the same system as it was before, only it became larger and more complex.

Indeed, no cell or animal or plant can be created is isolation. They are integrated inside a bigger system that is: Life as a whole.

And if life as a whole is studied only as a unique entity (without subdiving into cells, organisms, etc), what about its entropic changes over time, from the beginning up to now, with all the complexity we see? Maybe that of any complex chemistry that interacts with external energy and increases its entropy? What are the scientific data on this?

[studiot]

Both classical and statistical thermodynamics are founded on the idea of the state of a system.

 

Order and disorder are not really scientific terms they are populist words.

 

Order has no meaning at all in classical terms.

In statistical terms it simply means that you can take any one of the possible states a system may adopt and declare that to be order.

Every other state by definiition is therefore disorder.

 

Of course, rather like choosing a suitable origin to make calculations easy, we select the most convenient state to call our base order.

 

Numerical calculations for thermodynamic transitions are only possible if the beginning and end states are completely known, but it is not always possible to know the thermodynamic state of a system.

 

Whilst you are checking the definitions of the word state, it would be a good idea to include other thermodynamic terms you are chucking about.

 

An open system allows exchange of matter and energy with the surroundings.

A closed system allows exchange of energy but not matter.

 

Other useful terms to check include Energy, Entropy, System, System boundary, Surroundings, System Variables.

 

Finally you have not answered my first question

 

Are you wrinting an essay?

This is not an idle question, just that it would be useful for those trying to help to understand the purpose of your thoughts since you are not using technical terms correctly.

[minaras]

Recent understandings on the mechanisms behind carcinogenesis and metastasis can be summarized on the following 2 key points:

1)All tumors (and other diseases) are different from person to person. Even tumor cells from a single individual are different.

2)Cancerous behavior is not only a matter of genetic material. It has to do with a complex and reciprocal cross-talk between cells and their environment. Extra-cellular matrix is not static, but on the contrary is very dynamic. Genes by themselves are not enough.

 

In a nice lecture, Mina Bissel explains all these findings

 

 

And my question is this:

Isn’t it obvious that all these discoveries suggest that actually it is all just a matter of complex chemical reactions after all? They (reactions) all belong in a system that can be seen as a catalogue of chemical reactions. Some happen intra-cellularly and others happen extra-cellularly, but why does this matter? They all belong in a unique catalogue of spontaneous chemical interactions.

And as explained before, the whole life can be explained in that way…

[Strange]

Isn’t it obvious that all these discoveries suggest that actually it is all just a matter of complex chemical reactions after all?

And as explained before, the whole life can be explained in that way…

 

Yes. Life is a series of complex chemical reactions. Everybody knows that already. Do you have anything new or intelligent to contribute?

[Mad For Science]

Life, like everything, is subject to entropy (energy no longer available to do work) as organisms live their entropy tends to increase (we lose energy that is useful to sustain our life functions). However this is the reason that we require food. We get energy from food to compensate for the increase in entropy. If we stop taking in food to counteract the increase in entropy we start to deteriorate and eventually we will die. After death there is no longer a means to overcome the increase in entropy and we start to decay via chemical reactions..

Edited October 29, 2015 by Mad For Science

[minaras]

In a recent paper scientists are proposing a way that the very first species started Darwinian evolution. The first species presumably came from mixed genetic material withut well defined species. http://phys.org/news/2015-11-species-darwinian-evolution.html

 

 

 

However, from the paper that I referenced, it is evident that scientists make the unsupported assumption that in the beginning there was a big genetic jumble. In other words, they think that nucleic acids were created first, as the basis of all life.

However:

a)Not all organisms have nucleic acids (e.g. prions)

b)Even if you cut nucleic acids in every kind of way, if you isolate them and you place countless of them together, even after billions of years, this will not result in what we call as life!

[Strange]

In other words, they think that nucleic acids were created first, as the basis of all life.

 

Where does it say that?

But note that evolution can only act when there is a transfer of genetic material. Therefore, the first lifeforms on which evolution could have operated must have had genetic material.

[Essay]

b)Even if you cut nucleic acids in every kind of way, if you isolate them and you place countless of them together, even after billions of years, this will not result in what we call as life!

 

But, if you cut countless nucleic acids in every kind of way, and don't isolate but integrate them into a membrane bound system, which replicates due to passive growth and already has a proton pump, then after just a few thousand years (I'd expect) the selection for copying of beneficial molecules would occur ...until something close to an actual living cell would become recognizable.

[minaras]

 

But, if you cut countless nucleic acids in every kind of way, and don't isolate but integrate them into a membrane bound system, which replicates due to passive growth and already has a proton pump, then after just a few thousand years (I'd expect) the selection for copying of beneficial molecules would occur ...until something close to an actual living cell would become recognizable.

a) Assuming you have a system that replicates in the first place sounds like "give me one miracle for free and i will explain all the others"

b)Your scenario means that no extinction of species is possible. If a primordial system that you described, with nucleic acids, membranes, proton pumps etc was there for so many centuries without being decomposed, then why don't we see these kinds of entities today? If they were able to survive back then, why did they become extinct after some years?

 

 

 

Where does it say that?

But note that evolution can only act when there is a transfer of genetic material. Therefore, the first lifeforms on which evolution could have operated must have had genetic material.

And what about prions? Are they primordial organisms or the exact opposite?

[Strange]

a) Assuming you have a system that replicates in the first place sounds like "give me one miracle for free and i will explain all the others"

 

No, because we have plausible hypotheses for how replicating molecules can arise (and then compete and hence evolve).

 

b)Your scenario means that no extinction of species is possible.

 

I don't see why.

 

 

If a primordial system that you described, with nucleic acids, membranes, proton pumps etc was there for so many centuries without being decomposed, then why don't we see these kinds of entities today? If they were able to survive back then, why did they become extinct after some years?

 

Presumably for the same reason that we have never seen another abiogenesis "event". Existing organisms will feed on (and hence destroy) any environments and/or primitive organisms. They have been "out evolved".

 

And what about prions? Are they primordial organisms or the exact opposite?

 

Do they replicate with heritable characteristics?

[minaras]

 

No, because we have plausible hypotheses for how replicating molecules can arise (and then compete and hence evolve).

 

Replication is one of the most highly sophisticated procedures that we see in nature.

Assuming that replication existed before evolution, means that it wasn’t helped by evolution at all. Indeed, some scenarios are proposed on how nucleic acid replication existed in the first place (without the help of evolution). However, they are speculations of possible crazy ways that it might have emerged in the first place, with a low likelihood to be the real case.

Since it is difficult to get from some nucleic acids to replication, the proposed theories are as complex as……Hmm ok! Lets see how we got on Alpha Centauri…. Possibly a volcano eruption ejected a man into the space, where he met a comet that took him near Mars. Then the comet fell into one of its moons. After that, the moon was hit by another comet and the man was transferred near Pluto, where the comet collided with another comet, etc etc , until he was brought to Alpha Centauri..

 

 

 

Presumably for the same reason that we have never seen another abiogenesis "event". Existing organisms will feed on (and hence destroy) any environments and/or primitive organisms. They have been "out evolved".

 

 

Yes, but this means that they were not destroyed before eating capacity was created, which means that evolution was there for a lot of time before this could happen.

Before eating capacity, the organisms that posed survival capacities, were those that could adapt to the environment. Given the harsh initial conditions of Earth, I don’t see why this didn’t lead to less complicated, steady organisms, instead of complex higher sophisticated organisms with lower entropy.

 

 

 

Do they replicate with heritable characteristics?

 

 

 

Not only do they have heritable characterists, but also they can also undergo evolution and natural selection.

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/12/31/evolution-without-genes-prions-can-evolve-and-adapt-too/

[Strange]

Assuming that replication existed before evolution

 

Why would you assume that?

 

 

with a low likelihood to be the real case.

 

Ah, the usual creationist nonsense. I wondered where you were coming from. Thanks for finally making it clear.

 

 

Not only do they have heritable characterists, but also they can also undergo evolution and natural selection.

http://scienceblogs....-and-adapt-too/

 

Interesting. Thank you. This would seem to undermine much of your nonsense. So evolution can occur at the chemical level (which isn't much of a surprise) and this could have given rise to the more complex molecules used by living organisms.

[minaras]

 

Why would you assume that?

Because if evolution existed before replication, it means that there was only evolving chemical reactions undergoing natural selection.

 

 

 

Ah, the usual creationist nonsense. I wondered where you were coming from. Thanks for finally making it clear.

Nonsense! Not even close. I argue that there is only spontaneous chemical reactions out there and life is only a matter of our specific perspective. Is that a creationist view? I would rather say that you are closer to the creationist point of view than i am, whether you realize it or not. However, believing or not to god is a totally different thing!

 

 

 

 

Interesting. Thank you. This would seem to undermine much of your nonsense. So evolution can occur at the chemical level (which isn't much of a surprise) and this could have given rise to the more complex molecules used by living organisms.

I cannot disagree very much with you, because you will beg the moderator to ban me and lock the topic! So... you are right on this!!!!

[Strange]

Because if evolution existed before replication, it means that there was only evolving chemical reactions undergoing natural selection.

 

That seems to be the general consensus. A period of chemical evolution that gave rise to the various components (membranes, RNA, proteins, etc) that were required.

 

 

I cannot disagree very much with you, because you will beg the moderator to ban me and lock the topic!

 

I don't know why you think that. I have never requested such a thing (for you or anyone else).

[minaras]

 

That seems to be the general consensus. A period of chemical evolution that gave rise to the various components (membranes, RNA, proteins, etc) that were required.

Thats right! If we all agree about the chemical evolution, i don't see why you think i am talking nonsense, or what i am saying is outrageous!

 

Instead of assuming that chemical evolution gave rise to membranes, RNA, proteins and then we had a process of creating sophisticated structures with decreasing entropy, as the general consensus is, there might be another option.

That this chemical evolution continued indefinitely, with increasing complexity (in which entropy of life as whole entity increases), and all we have today are chemical systems that prevailed, and thus have surviving capacities to our eyes. This option points that replication is not necessarily the starting point, but only an evolution of repeatable reactions, as the latter easily prevail and evolve in chemical reaction soup. Membranes, proteins and complex organics can easily be produced and prevail in a soup of evolving chemical reactions, since they are stable, with many isoforms of varying stereochemistry, that diminishes the chances for chemical equillibrium, thus further bursting complexity.