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Community Lecture Series
Community Lecture Series
Thermodynamics expert tells crowd it's all about energy flow
Nov. 11, 2008
BOZEMAN, Mont.--It's not Jared Diamond's guns, germs and steel that shaped mankind, said scientist-author Eric Schneider recently in Bozeman, Montana: It's energy.
"Probably the biggest impact that science has had on mankind…is turning heat into work," said Schneider at a public lecture sponsored by the NASA-funded Astrobiology Biogeocatalysis Research Center at Montana State University. "Until man figured out how to take heat and turn it into work, it was all on the backs of oxen, maybe some windmills and sailboats."
Schneider, a self-described half-biologist, half-physicist from nearby Livingston, Mont. is an expert on thermodynamics, the relationship between heat and movement. Along with Carl Sagan's son, Dorian Sagan, he co-authored "Into the Cool," a book about energy flow and the laws of thermodynamics.
Thermodynamics is a young science, only 150 years old, Schneider told the crowd of about 130 community members and students. But its laws—which are generally applied in the physical sciences—also have implications for biology and ecosystems, possibly even insights into the origin of life.
"Nature abhors a gradient," said Schneider, paraphrasing the second law of thermodynamics. Whether it is a difference in pressure, chemistry or temperature, Nature brings a gradient to equilibrium, evidenced by a hot cup of coffee that naturally cools to room temperature.
As the gradient moves toward equilibrium, the transfer of energy interacts with the surroundings, said Schneider, and the larger the gradient, the more powerful this interaction. But interestingly, he said, while particles in Nature tend toward randomness, the presence of a gradient can cause a very high level of complex organization. Even non-living systems can "self-organize" when in the midst of a gradient.
Take a hurricane, for example, which occurs when air warmed by the sea surface collides with a cold upper atmosphere.
The temperature and pressure gradients cause a massive force to generate apparently spontaneously. ”What’s most remarkable,” said Schneider, “is that rather than a chaotic random collection of moving particles, the hurricane becomes a highly organized system with a gazillion-gazillion molecules all moving in the same direction at the same time.”
Such “order from disorder” is a fascination of Schneider’s. He suggests that life is essentially the ultimate organized system that could have originated from non-life, particularly if that occurrence was in the midst of a gradient.
Schneider, like many scientists, theorizes that life could have originated in deep-sea vents, where lava extrudes through fissures at the bottom of the ocean. At this interface, super-heated water and vent gases collide with the cold salty ocean water. Vast differences in temperature and chemical gradients along with tremendous pressure provide conditions that could catalyze the origin of life. Even the Earth itself sits in the midst of a gradient -- a vast differential between the Sun at 5800 degrees Kelvin and outer space at a cold 3 degrees K.
Before concluding and fielding questions on everything from dark energy to intelligent design, Schneider reminded the audience that the study of energy flow can give us insights into complex systems: everything from the Gross Domestic Product to how sedentary adults--"couch potatoes"-- age significantly faster than active people.
"There's a delicate balance between order and disorder. My part of thermodynamics is, generally, everything becomes random in nature." But, Schneider said, "You put gradients across things, and things get more complex."
Schneider's talk was part of the NASA-funded ABRC's Community Lecture Series.
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