Life versus Entropy

Life versus Entropy

Wolfgang Hebel *

Abstract
The concept of entropy or the 2nd principle of thermodynamics constitutes a fundamental principle of classical physics, which among other things establishes that a system of particles having a higher state of order than its environment, will degrade to the less orderly state of its surroundings as a function of time. This is an irreversible process, which applies as well to ordinary matter as to living matter (organisms). The present paper discusses why living cells (organisms) being characterized by a unique state of well-ordered molecules, have yet persisted on Earth for billions of years despite their varying, less orderly environments.

Unsolved Question
The question as to how life appeared on Earth is very old but the correct answer is still under discussion. The traditional view reads that living cells originated autonomously on Earth through normal physical and chemical processes using the available molecular constituents of their surroundings. However, doubts about this view are increasing, as for example, that one has never observed a living cell coming into existence, i.e. arising de novo, without its mother cell (model cell) disposing of the required knowledge on the functioning of life being coded into the molecular structure of the inherited DNA complex. This fact can be regarded as a direct consequence of the fundamental principle of entropy, which excludes that a uniquely ordered molecular state like the system of a living cell can build up autonomously i.e. generate itself out of surrounding disorder. Such exceptional event demands that energy (or information) from outside is transferred to the system in a well-directed way.
Nevertheless, traditional science argues that under the particular environment conditions of the early Earth liquid containing, membrane enclosed vesicles or cells formed through ‘necessity and chance’ or by exceptional events (singularities), which developed step by step orderly molecular states inside exhibiting functional abilities [2]. Some of these primeval cells succeeded eventually in replicating themselves. By this, they had created the prerequisite to potentiate information. The constantly reproduced younger vesicles stored increasingly useful information in their molecular structures to produce finally the first primeval cell on Earth. However, in contrast to these assumptions, until today, also advanced bio-molecular research has not succeeded in synthesizing principal cellular components (e.g. proteins, RNA’s, DNA’s, etc.) from their elementary constituents in a way to make a living cell function autonomously and to reproduce itself.


* EU Scientific Coordinator retd. Brussels, 2 November 2008
Email: wolfgang.hebel@telenet.be




In his recent book on “The Mystery of Life – Does Science hold the Key?” [1], the author discusses a different view concluding that primeval living cells on Earth must have originated from mother cells (models), which arrived on our planet from outside. Those cells had the intrinsic ability to duplicate at the appropriate moment and escaped so from dying out. They constantly generated younger, untouched descendants who preserved their intrinsic ability i.e. their inherited knowledge on the functioning of life. In this way, they not only overcame the dismantling entropy effect on Earth, but they even used this effect to get biological evolution go on our planet.

Beneficial Entropy
Of course, also the imported capacity of constantly producing fresh living cells on the primeval Earth had to cope with the omnipresent entropy effect. Due to this effect, the reproduced descendents never had exactly the same molecular architecture of their DNA complex as their parents nor were this complex completely identical among related cells. During the time-demanding replication process, entropy was permanently present so that faults were customary and happened regularly in the reproduction machinery of the cells. However, only those descendents were able to reproduce successfully, whose replication errors did not pass a critical maximum percentage characteristic of the species concerned. All others were damned to vanish as they were excluded from future reproduction. Most of the surviving descendents, however, were slightly different in their inherited DNA structures and so were able to survive under environmental conditions possibly different from those of their parental cells. It is this typical nature of reproduced living cells, which makes them survive under changing environmental conditions. Besides, this typical nature had been discovered sometime ago already by Charles DARWIN who explained us, ‘the fittest will survive’. Thanks to this fundamental principle of life, innumerable different species have emerged and vanished again on Earth during billions of years.

From the aforementioned, one may conclude that the essentially dismantling effect of entropy, which on the one hand prevented that life could emerge autonomously on Earth, has favored on the hand that primeval microbes (Archaea, Bacteria) arriving from outside could propagate [1]. Due to its ingenious concept, life not only overcame the fatal entropy effect on Earth, but in addition, life used this effect and made it partner of the most amazing evolution of living organisms on our planet.


References:

[1] Wolfgang Hebel: The Mystery of Life – Does Science hold the Key?
German University Press, Baden-Baden, 2007
[2] Christian de Duve: Aus Staub geboren – Leben als kosmische Zwangsläufigkeit
Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg, 1995
[3] Wolfgang Hebel: Functional Physics of Life
www.google.com.wolfgang-hebel.blogspot, Sept. 2008