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Thermodynamics and...the afterlife?

Oxymoron

Thinker
Oxymoron
Joined
Oct 25, 2006
Messages
207
Being new here, i'm not going to pretend to be a rocket scientist but I do have a pressing question that maybe some of you great minds can help me out with.

The first law of thermodynamics: energy can be transformed but not created or destroyed.

The second law of thermodynamics: The entropy of the universe is increasing.

Okay, I can grasp this. Believing in a God or Gods or a higher power aside, when we die, what the hell happens to all of this energy. Since we are made up of atoms and molecules and such, and everything is, is it fair to say that when we die, we don't really die, but go on as energy? And if this is true, what form of energy to we take? I know there are a million different arguements that can be made on this, i'm just curious as to what people think about it. Who's to say that ghosts and spirits and such do not exist, if in fact they are made up of the same "stuff" that we are, in our present form (of energy that is).

I know to some this may be a fundamental question not worth answering, but any input would be greatly appreciated. To take the arguement a step further, in considering the second law of thermodynamics, could I say that everytime someone dies, they're adding to the disorder of the universe, so what the heck, are we just barreling toward a big chaotic existence?

I have tons of questions to pose, but I think maybe taking in one little question at a time will thwart off any mind paralyzing headaches. lol

thanks
 
"Us," is in our "self" is a phenomenon of our brains. Maintining a functioning brain takes a constant infllux of food. When we're dead, we're gone. The persistence of a "self" without a brain or other storage media is simply impossible.
 
When I die, my body will be put into the ground. My body will be decomposed by bacteria, fungi and insects. The energy and matter contained in my body will re-enter the biosphere in other forms. For example, Oxygen from my body might be used to drive ATP production. A little bit of the energy contained in the stable electron orbit shells in the atoms in my body will be radiated as head due to spontanious electron transitions (EDIT: I have been told by reliable sources that this is insignificant in scale, if at all. I've left it in for completeness' sake). The breaking of molecular bonds is generally endothermic (i.e. requires energy), but the formation of those bonds will often release a bit of energy. In general, it will carry on. However, the 'information' encoded in my body (i.e. the exact layout of my brain) will not. I will be gone, forever.
 
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So I might be able to argue the idea of existing after this life, say in a hardrive somewhere or on someones desktop? I can understand what you are saying in respect to the idea of "self", but what about the energy? And the whole spiraling into chaos thing? :)
 
Wow, Taffer, you could have just said worms. lol. So i'm going to say, you do not believe in any kind of spirit world or ghosts or the like? :)
 
Oxymoron said:
So I might be able to argue the idea of existing after this life, say in a hardrive somewhere or on someones desktop? I can understand what you are saying in respect to the idea of "self", but what about the energy? And the whole spiraling into chaos thing? :)
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Energy is not yourself. It is not a pattern, nor does it contain any information. The only way for yourself to continue is for the '*information' encoded in your brain to continue.

*'Information' as in relative positions of axons, etc etc etc.
 
No cigar

Well, from a physics standpoint, I would not say it is impossible for energy to carry information, but extremely improbable and decidedly infeasable in the case you are presenting.

There could be an energy type that our sensors cannot detect that mimics the contents of the brain which you could call a soul.

There could also be an ideal environment that these souls gravitate toward that you could call heaven and there could be some souls that resist that pull and become ghosts.

All in all though, the likelihood of this explanation being accurate is absurd. It would require the greater will of an unknown being or technology that is far beyond anything we could imagine to manipulate things as such. Either of those existing without our detecting it in some way is also highly unlikely. It could be argued that other technology or will is used to prevent detection however.

In the long run though, there is nothing that this explanation explains that science has not already explained in a more feasible or logical manner.

Occam's Razor.
 
"All in all though, the likelihood of this explanation being accurate is absurd. It would require the greater will of an unknown being or technology that is far beyond anything we could imagine to manipulate things as such. Either of those existing without our detecting it in some way is also highly unlikely. "

Hmm. There was a time when everyone thought the sun revolved around the earth. Gratefully the scientific revolution came about and straightened us out. Who knows what we may discover as we progress scientifically. The Human Genome Project for example, would have been viewed as absurd long ago. ;)
 
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Oxymoron said:
"All in all though, the likelihood of this explanation being accurate is absurd. It would require the greater will of an unknown being or technology that is far beyond anything we could imagine to manipulate things as such. Either of those existing without our detecting it in some way is also highly unlikely. "

Hmm. There was a time when everyone thought the sun revolved around the earth. Gratefully the scientific revolution came about and straightened us out. Who knows what we may discover as we progress scientifically. The Human Genome Project for example, would have been viewed as absurd long ago.
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Perhaps more to the point, we already have a materialistic explanation of how energy and entropy work with respect to human life (and human death).

In order to remain alive, humans need to expend energy. They get this energy from the food that they eat; that's part of why when you're tired, you tend to want to eat something and it may help to make you better. Among the other things that this energy is spent upon is keeping the body core temperature high enough.

When you die, your body cools down. That's "entropy" at work. A warm person sitting in a tub of cool water (like a swimming pool) is not energetically neutral. Heat leaks out of the person and into the water, warming the water and cooling the person. If you were dead -- and then dumped into a swimming pool, you would relatively quickly reach equilibrium temperature with the water. The same thing happens, only more slowly, with a dead body exposed to the air.

There's no evidence at all for some "magic" form of energy that is specially persistant. In fact, such a form of energy would itself be a violation of the law of entropy, because thermodynamics says that ALL energy will eventually dissapate. An "immortal" soul -- as a pattern of energy -- would not do this.
 
drkitten said:
Perhaps more to the point, we already have a materialistic explanation of how energy and entropy work with respect to human life (and human death).

There's no evidence at all for some "magic" form of energy that is specially persistant. In fact, such a form of energy would itself be a violation of the law of entropy, because thermodynamics says that ALL energy will eventually dissapate. An "immortal" soul -- as a pattern of energy -- would not do this.
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I didn't know thermodynamics says all energy will dissapate. When you say dissapate, do you mean disperse or actually end its existence? And doesn't it also say that the total amount of energy in the universe is constant? So if energy is not created or destroyed just transformed how does it dissapate? The second law also points out that when something becomes more ordered it's surroundings become more disordered. I'm not sure if I'm making any sense, I think I'm missing my own point here. Do you see what I'm trying to get to? :boggled: lol.
 
Oxymoron said:
I didn't know thermodynamics says all energy will dissapate. When you say dissapate, do you mean disperse or actually end its existence? And doesn't it also say that the total amount of energy in the universe is constant? So if energy is not created or destroyed just transformed how does it dissapate? The second law also points out that when something becomes more ordered it's surroundings become more disordered. I'm not sure if I'm making any sense, I think I'm missing my own point here. Do you see what I'm trying to get to? :boggled: lol.
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Heat and entropy.
 
Oxymoron said:
I didn't know thermodynamics says all energy will dissapate. When you say dissapate, do you mean disperse or actually end its existence?
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A more technical term is "come to equilibrium." It will not end its existence, but there will no longer be pockets of high energy and low energy.

Basically, all "work" is done based on energy differentials. The water is higher on one side of the dam than on the other, and therefore work can be extracted from the difference in gravitational potential energy. In a perfectly flat body of water, like a lake, there is no difference and no work can be extracted. It doesn't matter if the lake is at 10 ft or 10,000 ft.

Similarly, a steam engine works because part of it is very hot, and part of it is cold, and work is done as energy flows from the hot part into the cool part. Without a temperature difference it wouldn't work -- it doesn't matter whether the final (uniform) temperature is 80 degrees or 40.

Even life on earth works this way. It only works because the sun is very hot, and space is very cold. Eventually, the sun will cool and space will heat until nothing more can be extracted.

The second law of thermodynamics basically says that all the processes in the universe are running toward a state of maximum uniformity. Everything at the same density, pressure, temperature, electrical charge, whatnot, so there will be no local 'hot spots.' The term you usually see for this end-state is called "the heat death of the universe." Entropy has been maximized, so nothing further can be done.

So if energy is not created or destroyed just transformed how does it dissapate?
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It simply becomes more and more uniformly spread out.

Think about dumping some ink into a full bathtub. The ink is not destroyed, but dissapates, until you can no longer see differences between different parts of the water. The more ink you have, the darker the final state of the water is, but there's no local differences in the water.
 
Yep. I get the whole osmosis thing, but maybe i'm missing something. Entropy is just another word for disorder or heat, correct? This being the case, and based on what you previously explained, the universe is not barreling toward chaos, but toward "equilibrium"? An overall mean temperature throughout space?:covereyes

So. Here goes. A cell creates ordered structures from less organized starting materials, say amino acids into specific sequences of polypeptide chains. The increase in order, corresponding to the decrease in entropy, is coupled with an increase in the entropy of the surroundings. So for Thermodynamics purpose, a cell or an organism is an island of low entropy in an increasingly random universe?

What about the second law stating that a cell or organism cannot transfer or stransform energy with 100% efficiency. So if there is always this energy escaping into the surrounding, no matter how little, how could we ever reach the "heat death of the universe"? [edit: shouldn't there always be this ebb and flow of energy?]

And couldn't immortality be possible? :) Just had to throw that in there!! lol.
 
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The concept of an immortal consiousness is not feasible.

That doesn't mean it is not possible, just highly improbable.

If you believe that we live on in an energy form, that is slightly more feasible, but your consiousness is not likely to perpetuate, just the presence of your energy which would mix with all of the other energy of the world.
 
This little funny has been circulating on the internet for several years, so I don't think I'm violating any rules in posting it in its entirity:
*****
Dr. _____________ , of the University of ____________ Engineering, Final Exam question for May of 1997. Dr. _____________ is known for asking questions such as, "why do airplanes fly?" on his final exams. His one and only final exam question in May 1997 for his Momentum, Heat and Mass Transfer II class was: "Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with proof."

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
"First, We postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave.​

Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for souls entering hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, then you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and souls go to hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.​

Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant. Two options exist:
  1. If hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose.
  2. If hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the quote given to me by Theresa Manyan during Freshman year, "that it will be a cold night in hell before I sleep with you" and take into account the fact that I still have NOT succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then Option 2 cannot be true...Thus, hell is exothermic."
​
 
:relieved: okay. I think my brain may have just imploded. Thanks for the info, it's all fascinating!
 
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