Alex McColgan

NASA defines life as a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.

Prominent scientists argue that life is not strictly self-sustaining.

Life requires an environment with which it has a dynamic relationship, where life draws its energy and raw materials and expels its waste.

An environment that is full of free energy, an environment that sustains life.

Life's relationship with its environment is crucial to understanding how life is possible.

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.