06. The Mechanics of Creation

 - and their consequences

Chapter VI

To reiterate: All biological life on Earth, or elsewhere, all industry, all human economy runs on the principles of thermodynamics. For every breath, every stroke, every turn you need a source and a sink for energy and negative entropy - the two are so intertwined you could almost say a source for energy and a sink for entropy; but that would not be right.

Erwin Schroedinger, the scientist with the cat - and the world seems to have got that one wrong, too - one of the few physicist that wrote about life as a subject of physics, stated 1944 that all living beings imbibe not energy, but order or negative entropy, and store it.

The sun dissipates this physical expression of order into the surrounding space, in form of electromagnetic waves and particles of light, which is then be used by plants to dissemble and recombine carbonated water into molecules of higher order of carbohydrates and oxygen - off which the rest of animaldom then feeds and breathes. And there is much to be said for that. Energy input results in chaos - or entropy, physical disorder. Living beings, however, are highly ordered beings - cellular disorder would mean, for instance, cancer. We must forever replicate our DNA, not cook it.

Hot tea may warm you in a direct manner, but will starve you to death. It's the sugar in the tea that keeps you alive, by allowing your body cells to extract chemical disentropy. The energy thereby released keeps you alive and running as a thermodynamic entity by necessity. The energy release into the surrounding sink can then be seen as a necessary side effect of the destruction of disentropy - negative entropy therefore as a carrier of positive energy. Living beings cannot take in energy directly - they won't run on heat or electricity. And mechanical thermodynamic entities, no matter which form of energy they use, all need a sink for it and a source for negative entropy as well.

All of these sinks and sources combine to one planetary source and sink - which, in turn, are provided by the Sun and outer space, for photosynthesis - but life on Earth was before photosynthesis. In fact, life on Earth brought forth photosynthesis - not the other way around. Think reverse.

The source and sink for life on Earth, before photosynthesis, was provided for by the planet - and space. By concentrated matter and emptiness.

On a smaller scale, a source and sink can be created by a thermodynamic process; but this process will then need, by virtue of being thermodynamic, on first a larger, then a final scale, a primary source and sink - which then cannot be provided for by thermodynamics, or else it would not be final.

That primary system has to be completely independent of any thermodynamic influence and, furthermore, self-augmenting to provide energy without limit (ultimately destroying itself with E = mc²).

What could that primary system be?

Behold - I give you gravity

The Agent of Creation

Some say that gravity, because of it's properties, could be labeled as "negative energy" - but this is not quite true. It seems that not gravity itself can be seen as negative energy, but rather the negative entropy brought forth by gravity. Gravity provides for negative entropy or physical order, and this process then evokes energy - on a supergalactic scale.

Physical order or negative entropy, and its inherent energy, is what biological life and its offspins run on. Yes, thinking in reverse once again - we probably do not live off something as positive as energy, but off something negative - negative entropy. Of course, this distinction is only on the mind, because humans have decided to label mess and disorder as positive; but that is what I mean by "reversing" the thinking.

The important point is that the creation of a source and sink is an ongoing process, evoked by a force; physical creation is going on as we speak. Should it stop, the world would freeze to a cold standstill and dissolve. Luckily, it is not a process, but a property of matter, therefore beyond the control of any living or mechanical being.

This physical creation by gravity, which provides the universe with both static order and dynamic energy in real time, is also behind the steady change and evolution of this universe as a whole and in the microcosms contained in it.

Nothing is ever completely beyond its reach, as everything that exists in the form of matter is part of it and immersed in it at the same time.

And that is why we don't see it.

Energy Return On Energy Invested

 … and the farmer.

An economy can be balanced on something as esoteric as money, or something slightly less so, like energy.

The concept of "Energy Return on Energy Invested" - EROEI - states that for every kWh of energy invested into a process, one can balance the amount of kWh returned on it; this usually is negative, unless the process allows some form of energy or energy carrier to be harvested.

In hydroelectric power plants, "wind farms" and photovoltaic system, this balance should be positive, or it would be detrimental. And, of course, in the extraction of mineral oil - and if you have to reinvest 99% of the extracted oil to extract 100% , this may be a gigantic waste, but positive on balance of EROEI.

But what about farming? Oil farming?

Humans cannot produce oil. They may grow oil plants, yes; but energy input is always needed - solar and non-solar: the produce needs to be transported and processed. And every farmer has to calculate as well - not the EROEI, but money returned on money invested, which is something quite different - as stated before, it deals in loss and negatives. However, neither the vegetable oil, nor the mineral oil used in the process were produced by the farmer.

Likewise, miners of oil or coal or gas do not produce the fossil fuels; they harvest or extract what was created some long time ago over an equally long period of time by something non-human - and, to the point, non-thermodynamic - just as does the farmer.

So, the amount of energy invested is never zero; and it can be very high - infinitely high - as long as the thermodynamic energy potential returned is higher than the thermodynamic energy invested. If it takes 10 kWh of 11 kWh of a certain energy potential to free 1 kWh of that potential, then so be it. Why? Because - we are indeed coming to the point - that 1 kWh is then for free.

Exaggerated? Go ask an engineer to explain the EROEI of wind and solar farms to you, but leave your shotgun at home. We now have had a century or so of inefficient power plants generating more inefficient power plants, and the overall EROEI most likely has been appalling.

What we also forget is that "energy invested" not only translates to "energy lost", but also to "negentropy lost" or "entropy gained", AKA "surroundings messed up" - a point quietly overlooked, for, as long as you can eat, you are content to live on a trash heap - aren't you? Yes, you are - and you will be.

Once again: The focus should be on entropy, not energy. The lower the EROEI, the higher the cost in entropy, while the cost in energy is not really felt - there may be less energy freed, but you can tell that only by the monetary price; and so scarcity and ineffective abundance have the same economic price and energetic impact, but a vastly different entropic one.

As mentioned, someone called humans 'incentive-driven, resource-seeking mammals' - but the resource "negative entropy" is somehow taken for granted - perhaps because - here it comes - humans once were scarce, resources were scarce, but negative entropy, itself a resource, was abundant galore; so, as long as they have to eat, they don't really mind the surrounding disease.

Disentropy in food has priority over disentropy of surroundings.

There is no Energy Returned without Energy Invested -
but what about Entropy Returned on Entropy Invested?

Always think reverse...

Post Oil Man and Bunker Potatoes

Ok. Let's say we provide you with a post-oil, post-all bomb shelter, a big underground vault, with enough air for a year and water in abundance, but no light, electricity or other form of energy - and no waste management.

It's always around 15° centigrade, the mean temperature underground, so comfy enough. Plus there is a bicycle on a stand with a generator and a battery and some LED floodlights, all electronically optimized to convert almost 100 % of your input into optimal lighting. Under the lights we have a field of potatoes.

This setup, and twenty years of your own life, already has been given to you for free, plus 1 year of supplies; but after that, you will have to live off the potato patch; i. e. work for your living. You can generate 100 watts for 10 hours a day, every day from now on. Hint: The potato patch needs 1000W of energy input per m², every day, for let's say two crops a year - and it measures at least 60 by 60 meters.

When will you give up? When will you start calculating by how many orders of magnitude you will miss your mark, if you attempt to exist by your own personal effort? That's thermodynamics, my friends.

Go ahead - see how much primary energy is invested in you by nature on a daily basis, and has been since time began, just for that teeny tiny bit you scrape off the food chain.

Your overall EROEI, like the Earth's, is absolutely terrifyingly low.

And stuffing yourself with fossil or otherwise enhanced food and draping yourself with synthetic clothing does not make it any better.

That's thermodynamics as well.

Remember the entropy!

Changes in time

Due to the second law of thermodynamics and the passage of time, every system in the universe runs under conditions it itself has not created - and could not create.

Every system runs in a surrounding that it itself cannot create; since this frame has to exist for the system to exist, something else beyond the system created its frame, conditions and surroundings.

In human terms, this by the way means, that everything that happens 'today' is not spontaneous, but has it's origins in the conditions that were created before 'today'; usually one or two generations ago. It is therefor pretty useless trying to change things by attacking undesired phenomena directly, but better to change and avoid the conditions which brought them into being.

It also means that undesired phenomena are an expressions of something that was - not is.

Entropy vs. Energy

Humans, animals, and machines (i. e. combustion engines), all constitute thermodynamic entities, they move by degrading carbohydrates and release their energy into the surroundings - and therefore are ruled by the laws of thermodynamics. As every energy turnover is, so are plants, although one step ahead in the chain of energy conversion. One and all, they require an external source and sink they themselves cannot provide or short-circuit.

No thermodynamic entity, mechanical engine or living being, can live off it's own waste. No (thermodynamic) system can ever feed itself. The 'perpetuum mobile', or fuelless, ever running engine is a forbidden abomination.

Life on Earth once existed without plants and photosynthesis, and might do so again; apart from that, even a lifeless planet is a thermodynamic entity processing external energy. Planets themselves, though being gravitational entities of their own, also constitute thermodynamic entities as well; if placed, by gravity, into a stellar stream of energy as a source - and the surrounding emptiness of space as a sink - lifeless matter on their surface expands, contracts and is moved according to the laws of thermodynamics - and, in combination, according to the laws of gravity as well.

Plants accumulate energy - and, even more important, physical order - by harvesting sunlight; they do not create it.

Perhaps observing the flow of entropy is indeed more rewarding than that of energy. Placing living creatures in a dark oven or hooking them up to the electric power grid doesn't help them that much … neither is hitting them with a hard object or applying any other form of physical energy.

And even as someone, working on the invention and development of the steam engine, noted, sink is more important than the source … it seems it is harder to get rid of entropy than it is to gain energy.

To wit:

If an asteroid hits Earth (as creation in progress), the ensuing lethal chaos is outweighed by the fact that order has been enhanced in the universe - for all time from now on; the Earth has grown heavier, the attraction to the Moon and everything else has grown greater, the space around it has been further cleared of clutter; and when all the dust has settled, the Earth will be cleaner and more orderly than before - even the resulting layer of iridium dust will be a recognizable, non - random pattern. Furthermore, the Earth will have gained energy - and the system lost entropy - even if this energy will be dissipated quite fast; but then, the Earth's energy is always being dissipated, and any impact that slows this process subtracts from that.

In other words: re-creation or creation in being can be detrimental to momentary life; that is why it is said it had to be over 6/7th before complex life on Earth could begin, so to speak - well, 5/7th.

Life is in fact the opposite of creation - it's the unraveling of the raveling - if you eat an apple, clean up your desk or manufacture an automobile, you are creating disorder and chaos on a grand scale. You are literally ruining creation - all life ruins creation. That's thermodynamics.

And you know it.

An Ode to the Earth once started with the words "Just think of her new..." - you get the Idea. Yes, that helps. We go to the sea and the mountains to escape - but only if that area is "new" and unused - by humans and other animals such as gnats, mosquitoes, sand flies, ants, sharks, lions, zebras, grizzlies, rabbits and cholera bacteria.

"New" means fresh as the fallen snow - which fell by gravity, by the way.

Of course, Earth - the living Earth - was never "new", because life is always messy: All life increases entropy, so the more the biomass, the more the mess.

Life is a constant fight against the very forces that created it - Sisyphos of old is witness to this: Every time he uses energy to combat the forces of gravity, that created the mountain, and the rock he carries it up upon, gravity in the end wins to rectify the wrong.

This is the struggle of life.

In all eternity.

- - - -

[Save page as: Text]  or

[Web Page, complete]

Contents

01. Thinking in Reverse _ Minds.html
02. The Opening of the Sluices _ Minds.html
03. Everyone thinks the Same - and that is Wrong _ Minds.html
04. Human Economy - in Greater Context _ Minds.html
05. Ape Economy _ Minds.html
06. The Mechanics of Creation _ Minds.html
07. The Grand Conclusion _ Minds.html
08. Addendum Papyrae: Epilogue _ Minds.html

Go to:          

prev / next