Your friend says that the second law of thermodynamics can't be true because life itself is a highly ordered system that wouldn't exist if everything tended to maximum entropy. What is your friend forgetting about life on the earth? A. Living things start out disordered and then increase in entropy. B. Living things start out ordered and then increase in entropy. C. The earth is not a closed system, and energy enters it as sunlight. D. The earth is a closed system, and thus the environment is at maximum entropy. **Not sure at all! :( Thank you!

Question

06-06-2015
Physics

Answered

Your friend says that the second law of thermodynamics can't be true because life itself is a highly ordered system that wouldn't exist if everything tended to maximum entropy. What is your friend forgetting about life on the earth? A. Living things start out disordered and then increase in entropy. B. Living things start out ordered and then increase in entropy. C. The earth is not a closed system, and energy enters it as sunlight. D. The earth is a closed system, and thus the environment is at maximum entropy. **Not sure at all! :( Thank you!

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avbhanda avbhanda · Answer 1 · 2015-06-06T21:20:06-04:00

This topic is actually quite controversial, but the answer in this case would be C.

Just some food for thought, the 2nd law of thermodynamics entropy of the universe is always increasing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that earth's entropy has to. As long as the net change in entropy of the universe is increasing it doesn't matter if one planet is decreasing a nominal amount. Next, Earth as said is not a closed system and you could argue that the sunlight and energy from the sun is increasing the total energy within the system that is earth meaning that it is increasing in entropy. Next, if you consider increasing entropy as an increase in the number of possible permutations that the universe or parts of the universe can take, then it is completely possible that an ordered planet and life is possible, although rare. This theory explains why there are so many life forms and why entropy is actually increasing when divergent evolution occurs.