1437

Explosions in the Sky (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 years ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

78 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] theneverfox@pawb.social 24 points 2 years ago

An explosion is pure entropy. It's high energy releasing to a low energy state in an uncontrolled manner

We climb down the energy slope very slowly to reverse entropy and create order

The universe is like us - temporary order emerges as it slides towards entropy

[-] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 7 points 2 years ago

Perhaps another way to think of it is that we're a patch of localised order in an overall disordered universe

[-] tetris11@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Or perhaps more eloquently:

we're the standing part of a harmonic fart

[-] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago

I don't understand this, but it sounds cool.

[-] tetris11@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

We're the fixed red dot in the superposition of the green and blue waves interfering with one other

[-] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 years ago

But are we actually creating order? To maintain life's order, we are creating much more disorder somewhere else.

Life is but an entropy maximization machine.

[-] vithigar@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago

On the overall scale of the universe? No, not even remotely close. On the local scale of the Earth, generally yes.

[-] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 years ago

Well, as much as possible anyway. When considering mass alone, life is quite efficient.

According to Wolfram Alpha:

The sun produces 3.8 * 10^28^ watts.

A single human produces 104 watts (calculated through the average caloric intake assuming that intake ≈ energy consumption) through heat radiation.

Therefore:

1 kg of human converts 1.5 watt into heat.

1 kg of the sun converts 0.0002 watt into (heat) radiation.

And while I have nearly no understanding how entropy is calculated, from those values alone it seems like humans produce more entropy per kg than the sun. I'm pretty sure entropy is somewhat related to energy production though.

[-] vithigar@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago

Yes, if you consider just a human-mass equivalent portion of the Sun then it's not doing much, but that's not really a useful comparison. We're talking about total net entropy here, not entropy per unit mass.

But yes, if it makes you feel any better, I'll concede that if you had octillions of people our total metabolic energy output would, in fact, be significantly higher than that of the Sun.

[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

This raises the question of how many kg of human mass is required to start fusion and create a human star? How does fusion even work if you have a mix of different elements? Would the human star pulse in a cycle of collapsing until hydrogen fusion starts, exploding out until it stops and then collapsing again? Or would any fusion ignite enough to stop it from collapsing into a neutron star or black hole?

And if I've asked this question, does it mean xkcd has already attempted an answer? Or at least a comic that mentions it?