this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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Science Memes

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Explosions in the Sky (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (5 children)

An explosion is pure entropy. It's high energy releasing to a low energy state in an uncontrolled manner

We climb down the energy slope very slowly to reverse entropy and create order

The universe is like us - temporary order emerges as it slides towards entropy

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Perhaps another way to think of it is that we're a patch of localised order in an overall disordered universe

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Or perhaps more eloquently:

we're the standing part of a harmonic fart

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't understand this, but it sounds cool.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

We're the fixed red dot in the superposition of the green and blue waves interfering with one other

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But are we actually creating order? To maintain life's order, we are creating much more disorder somewhere else.

Life is but an entropy maximization machine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

On the overall scale of the universe? No, not even remotely close. On the local scale of the Earth, generally yes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well, as much as possible anyway. When considering mass alone, life is quite efficient.

According to Wolfram Alpha:

The sun produces 3.8 * 10^28^ watts.

A single human produces 104 watts (calculated through the average caloric intake assuming that intake ≈ energy consumption) through heat radiation.

Therefore:

1 kg of human converts 1.5 watt into heat.

1 kg of the sun converts 0.0002 watt into (heat) radiation.

And while I have nearly no understanding how entropy is calculated, from those values alone it seems like humans produce more entropy per kg than the sun. I'm pretty sure entropy is somewhat related to energy production though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes, if you consider just a human-mass equivalent portion of the Sun then it's not doing much, but that's not really a useful comparison. We're talking about total net entropy here, not entropy per unit mass.

But yes, if it makes you feel any better, I'll concede that if you had octillions of people our total metabolic energy output would, in fact, be significantly higher than that of the Sun.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

This raises the question of how many kg of human mass is required to start fusion and create a human star? How does fusion even work if you have a mix of different elements? Would the human star pulse in a cycle of collapsing until hydrogen fusion starts, exploding out until it stops and then collapsing again? Or would any fusion ignite enough to stop it from collapsing into a neutron star or black hole?

And if I've asked this question, does it mean xkcd has already attempted an answer? Or at least a comic that mentions it?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

INSUFFICIENT DATA

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

If only this was a response AI could give. I think it would solve a lot of the problems

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

(apparent deadlink BTW). In answer to the question: slow and steady Hawking radiation from all the black holes, perhaps?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

...just ripples in the carbon cycle, momentary standing waves until we lose coherence...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

A single human may look organized, but collectively we are chaos