Metabolism & Thermodynamics (Daniel Vanraalte)
Metabolism
Metabolism will involve chemical processes and chemical processes will generate heat. What is interesting about the chemical processes in organisms is that they don't follow the laws of thermodynamics which is a rare phenomenon in nature.
The way that they defy these principles is that these living organisms don't rest at equilibrium. They maintain a high complexity since the organism is living. If all organisms died, this would be the equilibrium that things gravitate toward when we study thermodynamics.
The Metabolic process is mostly in conflict with the Second Law of Thermodynamics
The Second Law of thermodynamics states that when energy is transferred, there will be less energy available at the end of the transfer process than at the beginning.
Reactions typically will fall into two categories, the first is a system that loses potential energy and has products that are less complex, and the second is a system that gains potential energy and has products that are more complex. These are exothermic and endothermic reactions. Organisms have many of both processes but as a whole, when the organism is growing healthy it is increasing in potential energy and creating a highly complex product.
On the left is an exothermic reaction (decreasing complexity)
Entropy and the laws of thermodynamics may be a direct suggestion of intelligent creation. We observe that non-living things will fall into disorder on their own, mountains will begin to crumble, asteroids fall, and forests burn down. But living things make the potential energy greater, this is the natural order that can't originate from chaos. It isn't random chaos that millions of bacteria are concentrated in one organism or that the gravitational potential energy of a bird can be increased on its own to thousands
This Theoretical Physicist won't admit it but the laws of entropy and enthalpy seem to have stumped him. Thus he has hope in a new theory of Non-Equilibrium Processes.