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Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
Harry wrote ...
And what of the laws of entropy? It is hard to imagine the glass smashed into a thousand pieces reassembling itself.
Scientists are a weird bunch. They think it's impossible for a pile of glass fragments to reassemble into a wine glass, yet they think it's perfectly normal for an acorn plus a bunch of CO2, water and minerals to spontaneously assemble into an oak tree. If you challenge a scientist on this, he'll wave his hands and say something to the effect that the tree is an open system, so the Second Law still holds. But I find that explanation somehow unsatisfying.
I think what annoys me is that they use the glass example to teach that the thermodynamic arrow of time is the direction in which everything decays, ignoring the fact that living things grow in that direction, for reasons that science can't yet explain.
Registered Member #543
Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992
On the one hand, science is urged to accept as doctrine that we should accept as true only that which we can clearly and distinctly see to be true, but on the other we are invited to conceive of a superposition of states inside Schroedinger's box, and other counter-intuitive notions.
I sometimes fear that even if there be in all reality a superposition of states, or photon entanglement, that we may be incapable of understanding it - that the limits of human reason may have been reached when we arrive at the quantum level.
Registered Member #15
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068
Steve McConner wrote ...
Harry wrote ...
And what of the laws of entropy? It is hard to imagine the glass smashed into a thousand pieces reassembling itself.
Scientists are a weird bunch. They think it's impossible for a pile of glass fragments to reassemble into a wine glass, yet they think it's perfectly normal for an acorn plus a bunch of CO2, water and minerals to spontaneously assemble into an oak tree. If you challenge a scientist on this, he'll wave his hands and say something to the effect that the tree is an open system, so the Second Law still holds. But I find that explanation somehow unsatisfying.
I think what annoys me is that they use the glass example to teach that the thermodynamic arrow of time is the direction in which everything decays, ignoring the fact that living things grow in that direction, for reasons that science can't yet explain.
Living things require energy to grow. You're putting energy into a system to get it more organized and complex. It doesn't happen on it own. DNA has the fundamental instructions of how an organism does it and food and sunlight provide the ADDED energy to the system to "grow" and become more complex. Very simple. Well, not really, but it does make sense.
wrote ...
yet they think it's perfectly normal for an acorn plus a bunch of CO2, water and minerals to spontaneously assemble into an oak tree.
Steve - your beginning to reason like a Creationist. I'm worried for you. These materials DO NOT spontaneously assemble into an oak tree. It takes quite a bit time and there are many processes which much occur. Also, it requires considerable energy to do so.
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
OK, let me rephrase the question: Why is it that the tree is capable of consuming energy and making itself more organised? (At the expense of increasing the entropy of the universe as a whole, I must admit.) This is basically the thermodynamic version of "What is the meaning of life", so I don't really expect an answer, but I hope it'll spark some interesting debate.
Registered Member #1083
Joined: Mon Oct 29 2007, 06:16PM
Location: Upland, California
Posts: 256
I think time travel would violate energy conservation. You cannot create or destroy energy. If you were to travel forward in time, you would no longer exist in the present time, essentially destroying energy/removing energy from that system. Unless you consider the future and the present to exist at the same time in which case the energy would simply be moving.
Registered Member #15
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068
Steve McConner wrote ...
OK, let me rephrase the question: Why is it that the tree is capable of consuming energy and making itself more organised? (At the expense of increasing the entropy of the universe as a whole, I must admit.) This is basically the thermodynamic version of "What is the meaning of life", so I don't really expect an answer, but I hope it'll spark some interesting debate.
As a scientist and atheist as well, the meaning of life is very simple. The only purpose of life is to reproduce. Thats it. Everything else is biologically irrevelevant. Once you accomplish this, your purpose has been fulfilled. Thats why so many diseases etc... kick in after your 30's. Because, the body is already past its sexual peak and there is no reason to live anymore, so mechanisms which keep humans (and other organisms) young and healthy simply start turning off as you get older.
Registered Member #2123
Joined: Sat May 16 2009, 03:10AM
Location: Bend, Oregon
Posts: 312
Read Richard Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene".
What evolves are the DNA sequences in the oak tree chromosomes sequences, not the oak tree. The oak tree is merely the construct the DNA uses to perpetuate itself. Changes in living organisms (constructs) are driven by random errors in DNA some of which occasionally improve the organisms ability to endure entropy, and allow it's particular DNA to reproduce more of itself. Works for me.
On this threads subject of time travel, contemporary mathematic expressions may say its possible, but they are limited by our understanding of the cosmos. Until recently we had no clue about the astrophysical mathematical anomalies we now call "Dark Energy" and "Dark Matter". Previously there was data that didn't make sense, so it was fudged into some other theory.
I suspect all this worm-hole/time travel debate will end up being the theoretical physics equivalent of debating how many angels dance on the head of a pin. The arguments may have mathematical merit and are interesting to follow, but they may do little to address the reality we live in today.
Registered Member #15
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068
wrote ...
well if not anything elese, at least the time travel in future has been proved and like Turkey9 said:
No, it has not been proven nor is it a scientific theory. It is simply a hypothesis that has yet to be tested.
wrote ...
In this case, the astronauts arrived in future after the people living on earth, now that means the future was not made from scratch but it already existed. And if it exists then it should be possible to move in.out of it. :)
The twin experiment and time dilation doesn't amount to time travel. To the person on Earth, the astronaut is aging more slowly, however, from the astronauts frame of reference, the person on Earth is aging more slowly. Its a huge stretch of our present understanding to claim this is a case of time travel.
wrote ...
and well even in laws of physics there are many things which have been proved wrong like the famous law
"Nothing can travel faster than light." This has already been proved wrong. See here:
and for details on how was it made possible, go here:
No it hasn't. Some of these experiments involved entities that actually traveled faster than c in a particular REFERENCE FRAME, but none involves matter, energy, or information traveling faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
Interesting discussion, but make sure you interpret the facts correctly before overstating them (i.e. this law has already been disproven, etc... when in fact it hasn't) as that starts to border on psuedoscience which is not permitted on this forum.
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