Thermodynamics, origin of life and snow. ?

Question

If simple chemicals are totally thermodynamically incapable of forming more-complex structures (i. e. life), where do snowflakes come from? They have an awful lot of order and complexity for a structure that forms from unordered water molecules flying about in the atmosphere...

Just a thought.

I know thermodynamics doesn't support the creationist position, I just felt like pointing it out to them in question format.

I have nebulas collapsing and solutions to maximum packing problems waiting for the first person who says snow is an isolated thing.

WTF? This is exactly the right section because it relates to the misconceptions we hear from the "life is thermodynamically impossible" group all the time. If there was an origin of life category, I would have asked it there.

Answer 1

That is indeed true - but then so do molecules, atoms, crystals solar systems - loads of things. Order is VERY common in nature - it's actually rare to find things that are DISordered. I think the beef creationists have with the origins of life is that amino acids are common in nature, but they're not alive. The problem comes when those amino acids combined in exactly the right way to make the simplest form of life - DNA. There are immesely tiny chances of this happening randomly, because DNA is composed of lots of different amino acids, all in the right order, so they think some higher being made them in the right order to get the ball rolling.

Science doesn't really have a good way of explaining why this happens now - but that doesn't mean science never will be able to explain it.

Answer 2

Snowflakes are ice crystals. Crystals are highly ordered, because of the way the molecules stack up, but they are also homogenous - they are the same substance all the way through, with no room for complex parts with various functions. While a snowflake can look very complex to us, it's downright simple compared to all the interrelated systems in a living thing. The fact that order can be found in naturally ocurring crystals doesn't get you any closer to the spontaneous generation of life.

The second law of thermodynamics, the one mentioned in creation/evolution debates and which I believe you are referring to, says that things generally tend to go from order to disorder. The fact that crystals are formed, being arranged in an orderly fashion, no more breaks this law than the reproduction of animals and the creation of a new organism of orderly construction. And even in crystals we can see this principle at work. The longer crystals grow, the more opportunities there are for flaws and inconsistencies to appear in the ordered structure, and we do see these flaws in snowflakes.

Not to mention that snowflakes soon melt - because what order nature creates, it also destroys. Snowflakes do not "evolve" into new, more complex structures, better adapted to their environment. They are created, then are destroyed. Others are created, then destroyed, with no accumulation of random flaws to "create" new types of snowflakes.

Bottom line: don't look to snow, or thermodynamics, to shore up evolution theory.

Answer 3

thermodynamics does not say that it is impossible for complex things to form, thermodynamics only says that the collective disorder is increasing

Answer 4

The second law says a system can become more ordered if work is applied to the system.

Answer 5

with the aid of fact evolution does advise the origins of existence. existence originated and stepped forward from our clever dressmaker or as non secular people call Him, God. The God Yahweh has been the lacking hyperlink interior the chain of evolution in view that existence in the international started billions of years in the past.

Answer 6

God made the law of thermodynamics.

Answer 7

Reported: Wrong section.