The Sun is a low entropy object?

Here’s where people may be stumbling a bit.

When you think of the center of a nuclear explosion 865 thousand miles wide, the word that comes to mind may not be “order”. In fact, you might be hard pressed to imagine a more chaotic environment.

Well, let me explain why the center of the sun is a lower entropy environment than a chess board.

As I’ve been saying, low entropy order is not the same thing as what humans normally think of as order. A neat parking lot with cars all in their places and lanes open for traffic looks good to us. Everything is in its place, and because it IS, the parking lot can serve its function. That looks like order.

How can we think of an explosive reaction as ordered, when compared to that?

First of all, the energy density. Entropy is essentially the description of high energy states dispersing into lower energy states. The sun is extremely energetic. It is the largest “spike” in our entropy graph. Just about all the energy in the solar system is flowing downhill from this tall spike to the lower level “ground state” that the planets occupy. How is this spike being flattened and how does it disperse?

High energy particles are moving fast, and that means they tend to fly away from each other, and that means they disperse over time. But one of the main characteristics of objects like the sun is their gravitational attraction. The vast majority of the sun is composed of hydrogen. Hydrogen is the smallest and least energy dense element in absolute terms. It has only one proton, and one electron. Carbon, for instance is 12 times larger. It typically has six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons.

What’s going on in a star is that all these little hydrogen atoms are being squeezed together by their mutual gravity and in the process something gives. Protons DO NOT want to be near other protons. When they are forced into close proximity, like they are in the sun, what gives out is that a proton will randomly eject its positive electromagnetic charge in a W boson, which decays immediately into a positron, an electron neutrino, and light. The proton has then been converted into a neutron. The neutron is now less energy dense than the proton it was, and the two can bind with nuclear force to form deuterium, also known as heavy hydrogen. This is one proton, one neutron and one electron. Deuterium can then bind with other deuterium in the star to form helium and so on building heavier and heavier elements all the way up to iron.

EDIT: Here's a video i found about neutrinos that has an animation of the fusion process. good visual to assist with what i've written here.

http://www.sixtysymbols.com/videos/solar_neutrinos.htm


Any one atom of carbon is heavier and more energy dense than one atom of hydrogen. But carbon is made of 12 hydrogen atoms, not one. And that is much more energy than is found in one carbon atom. Each time atoms get larger they are emitting energy in the conversion of proton to neutron, the end product is always lighter and less energy dense than its constituent parts. These nuclear reactions are flattening the spike!

The positrons don’t get very far before colliding with an electron and annihilating in an anti-matter reaction emitting even more light, but the electron neutrino escapes un-molested into empty space, and after a few thousand years the light escapes too, finding its way into space, and the earth.

This sounds a little funny, doesn’t it? Light coming to us now from the sun was created in a nuclear reaction some few thousand years ago! Here’s how that works. Electrons and protons shove each other with light. With photons. When a nuclear reaction takes place the atoms shove at their neighbors quite strongly with the newly released light energy. Because the sun is so dense, that light immediately collides with another atom, and then that atom re-emits the light, shoving its neighbors as well. Light is rattling around the inside of the sun for thousands of years, shoving all those atoms in the process, before it finally meanders its way to the surface and escapes into space. This shoving is the outward pressure of the nuclear explosion. It IS what keeps the star from collapsing under its gravitational pull. If light DIDN’T take thousands of years to escape the sun, it would collapse!

The earth is mostly not free-floating hydrogen atoms. The earth is full of heavier atoms which are bound in chemical compounds. The fact that the elements are heavy, means they are less energy dense than their constituent hydrogen atoms would have been. The fact that they are in chemical compounds reduces their energy further because it satisfies the electromagnetic dynamics of the molecules. Each step toward this complexity is dispersing energy and flattening the spikes.

So a neatly arranged chess board may be made of wood which is a wide array of carbon compounds. Those compounds are all combined hydrogen atoms which have shed much of the energy they had as free-floating hydrogen atoms. It is a much higher entropy state than any equivalent mass of star matter.

Another way to measure entropy is in the number of configurations that matter can take. Well, hydrogen in the center of a star is one proton and one electron. Hydrogen can only form one chemical bond with another hydrogen atom, and that is H2. That’s the end of chemistry while discussing nothing but hydrogen. Now, the constituent parts of any carbon molecule are in fact the same elements as found in hydrogen, but in a HUGE variety of configurations. Configurations that just can’t be made when the hydrogen is still in its elemental state.

Johnson,

You've taken the time to write a lot out here and I thank you for that.

I've just skimmed it briefly. I've been busy as hell.
It's a great topic, IMO.
I want to take a better look at what you've wrote.

There's been a recent paper published in peer review that takes a look at how self-replicating objects, like living things, are good at dispersing energy and so are just likely to happen.

The second law of thermodynamics, in other words, trends toward life!

http://www.booktalk.org/post125794.html#p125794

Which is what i've been trying to explain here, haha!

interesting post about evolution

I brought some comments into this thread that were originally posted here:


http://www.booktalk.org/post126924.html#p126924

Gesler
I thought thermodynamics (is it the second law?) break things down over time. In other words, time, and the effects of nature working, leads to disorder and disarray, not order and life. A neat little stack of blocks, arranged to look like Washington's face, given time will crumble, fall apart, and scatter. But the converse is not true. Time and nature will not take a stack of blocks and form them into Washington's face.

I’ve gone over a lot of this in previous posts in this thread but it is always fun to try to rephrase and give a clearer more understandable answer, so I’ll take another swing at it. Also, perhaps people don’t want to hunt through the whole thread for answers like this.


The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy always increases over time. Entropy is called disorder, or chaos. It is also detectable in the number of ways to re-arrange some structure that will not change it.


A way to visualize “order” and “disorder” I’ve been using is to think of a line graph which something like this:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - /\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --/ - --\ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - /- - - - - \- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -/ - - - - - -\ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - /- - - - - -- - \- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - -- - -/ - - - - - - - - -\ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - -- - /- - - - - - - - - - \- - - - - - - - - -/ \ - - - - - - - - - - --
- - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ / - - - - - - - - - - - \_ _ _ _ _ _ _/ - \_ _ _ _ _ _ _ - - Ground state
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
_____________________________________________________ Thermal equilibrium


The solid line on the bottom is “thermal equilibrium”. The line running through the middle with two spikes in it is the current level of entropy. The ground state, which is empty space, and the spikes representing the sun (large spike) and the earth (smaller spike).


First, what is entropy? What are we talking about?


Entropy is the process by which the spikes are shortened and the gap between the ground state and thermal equilibrium is closed. The large spike, the sun, is the most ordered object in our solar system. It is also the highest concentration of energy.


It is ordered in that its contents are very simple. Nuclear particles being crammed together by gravity. In the fusion process these nuclear particles lose energy when binding together to form heavier elements. The extra energy is shed from the sun in the form of neutrinos and light. This reduces the overall energy level of the sun and produces entropy. The light given off by the sun is very high energy. That light lands on the smaller spike, the earth (and everywhere else, including and by far the majority of it into empty space) where that high energy light can do work on the matter of our planet. Our planet absorbs the high energy light and radiates it back off as low energy heat light.


Think of light as the potential to do work (a definition of energy). Imagine a glass box divided in two by a wall. One side full of water, the other empty except for a water wheel which turns gears to do some useful work outside of the box. Lift the partitian and water flows from one side to the other to turn the wheel and do work. With all water on one side you are looking at an analogy for the light from the sun. Once the water flows through the gap and the water levels are equal on both sides, you are looking at the quality of light being emitted by the earth, or our bodies, in the form of heat. All the energy that originally came to us from the sun is still there… all the water is still there, but it is broken up in a way that you can no longer harness the energy and get any work out of it.


With light, you start off with just a few high energy photons which can do lots of work that are absorbed and re-emitted as many low energy photons in the form of heat which have basically been exhausted of their usefulness.


So that’s what we are talking about when we say the universe trends from order to disorder. I’ve gone into it in a lot more detail in previous entries including how the sun can be called “ordered” and a checkerboard “disordered”, and how nuclear and chemical reactions increase entropy. Go check them out for more discussion!


So how does this process allow for the existence of structured things like life? The presence of the big spike allows for smaller spikes to form. If there was no big spike once could not spontaneously rise from the ground state. Big spikes like the sun originate instead by scooping a wide swatch of ground state together in one spot, pushing the ground state closer to thermal equilibrium while building a spike. (star formation from hydrogen clouds). Order is always temporarily borrowed from higher levels but ultimately produces flattened spikes, and lowered ground states… more and more entropy.


Life does exactly the same thing with photons that a piece of granite does. It absorbs a few high energy light photons and emits lots of low energy heat photons. But life does this at a much higher rate than inanimate matter. You have to eat often because you spend a lot of energy just existing. You are taking highly concentrated energy and turning it into low concentration heat energy. You exist because you are energetically favorable. You facilitate the transition of high energy to low energy. You help flatten the spikes and you are better at it than a lump of granite.


How do ordered structures come to be at all? Check this out:

This is sort of an analog for what is happening in life.

http://www.sixtysymbols.com/videos/restitution.htm

you start off with objects more or less evenly distributed on either side of the partition. This uniform configuration is a higher entropy state than having all particle on one side.

Left alone, the particles can never stack up all on one side.

But then he adds energy into the system by jiggling the surface. The particles arrange themselves into a configuration that we humans think of as ordered, and it is true that once the energy is no longer being applied it IS in the lower entropy condition.

But while the energy is being applied any particle in the less dense area receives much higher kinetic energy from impact with the floor. That high energy impact is equivalent to one of the tall spikes i keep mentioning. Because it is hit so hard it flies very far and has a certain likelihood to land on the dense side over the partition. Once it gets there the interactions with the floor are spread out across all the objects and instead of single tall spikes, there are dozens of shorter spikes. So in order to flatten the high energy impact spikes a structure emerges which we think of as ordered.

The order that we appreciate as pattern seekers, in other words, is a byproduct of the real work of dispersing the high energy spikes.

Any other configuration of those particles in the plastic case would be higher energy arrangements, and so don't last.

Gesler:
A plant may be "better" at converting energy than a lump of stone, but doesn't the plant actually have to exist before you can compare it to anything? How does nature 'favor' the plant before the plant exists? See what I mean. We can compare plants and stone NOW, because they're both here. But imagine if the universe consisted entirely of stones? Is the author saying the universe would create plants because they are better at converting energy than the stones are? How does an unintelligent universe even begin to make these kinds of decisions?

There aren’t any decisions being made. It’s a matter of what’s energetically favorable. How does an electron decide which path to flow down in a complicated circuit? Does it “see” to the destination and “feel” all the impediments in the way and decide which path to take to reach the other side?


No, it’s more like walking up to a set of double doors with your hands stretched out to push on both doors at the same time. One door has a desk pressed against it and doesn’t move, the other gives at your push, so that’s the one that opens, and that’s the one you go through. The door that gives is energetically favorable.

The plant is a result of a very long process of incremental moves toward this machine which processes energy. Plants are built out of the little statistically favorable incidents like the collecting of those balls in the tic tac box. You can’t jump from pile of carbon to plant. But you can jump from pile of carbon to something slightly more ordered under the right conditions. And then another small jump. A mechanical jump, propelled by simple physical interactions.


Let me know if any of this isn’t making sense and I’ll try to clear it up!

some new members have joined recently who it seems to me might take an interest in this thread so.....


BUMP.

i edited the entry here about the fusion process inside a star to insert a link to a sixty symbols video about neutrinos with a video showing what i was describing, plus an actual physicist talking on the subject!

scroll up and look for the red text!

good video.

everybody ought to go take a look at http://www.sixtysymbols.com at some point.

Fantastic site that talks physics at a level everyone should be able to get into!~

Thermodynamics bump.

Check it out, Bob!