Alex McColgan

You see, life is, at first glance, in defiance of the second law of thermodynamics.

How does the beautiful design of a bacterial cell, with its incredible complexity, control, and order, seemingly defy entropy and emerge out of a structureless chemical soup?

According to the second law, entropy should always increase, and systems should get more disordered with time, not less.

It was Erwin Schrödinger who realised that it is the environment that picks up the thermodynamic cost in his book What is Life?

in 1944.

On closer inspection, when we include the environment that sustains life, entropy does increase overall.

The second law of thermodynamics is not broken.

In fact, entropy increases faster with life than without.

It is this that led Jeremy England, a professor at MIT, to say, you start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine a light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant.

Life is incredibly effective at transforming energy and increasing entropy.

How effective?

Let's compare it to the brightest and most powerful object in the solar system.

the Sun.

In just 58 microseconds, it produces more energy than our species has in its entire history.

Pound for pound though, humans output a staggering 6,000 times more power at rest than the Sun.

Despite creating extremely localized order, life degrades free energy to heat, increasing entropy in the universe overall.

Unsurprisingly, given that you're watching this video, it's clear that entropy allows for, or even encourages, the development of life.

So how did the building blocks of life seemingly defy entropy in constructing order from chaos?

How does a living cell build up that can power itself, encode itself with DNA, construct itself too, and have the ability to evolve?

And how can it do it all piece by piece while being functional at every step, even though each part is essential?