Related papers: Evolution and Earth's Entropy
The Faint Young Sun Paradox comes from the fact that solar luminosity (2-4)x10^9 years ago was insufficient to support the Earth's temperature necessary for the efficient development of geological and biological evolution (particularly, for…
One of the unique features associated with the Earth is that the fraction of its surface covered by land is comparable to that spanned by its oceans and other water bodies. Here, we investigate how extraterrestrial biospheres depend on the…
We discuss how greenhouse gases affect radiation transfer in Earth's atmosphere. We explain how greenhouse gases like water vapor or carbon dioxide, differ from non-greenhouse gases like nitrogen or oxygen. Using simple thermodynamics and…
The possibility of planetary mass black hole production by crossing entropy limits is addressed. Such a possibility is given by pointing out that two geophysical quantities have comparable values: first, Earth's total negative entropy flux…
The universe is certainly not yet in total thermodynamical equilibrium,so clearly some law telling about special initial conditions is needed. A universe or a system imposed to behave periodically gets thereby required ``initial…
Global climate change is one of main concern of modern society. To estimate this change usually one estimates the global mean temperature. Measuring and calculating the Earth's average temperature are multi-steps complex processes which…
The universal validity of the second law of thermodynamics is widely attributed to a finely tuned initial condition of the universe. This creates a problem: why is the universe atypical? We suggest that the problem is an artefact created by…
Why can the world resist the law of entropy increase and produce self-organizing structure? Does the entropy of an isolated system always only increase and never decrease? Can be thermodymamic degradation and self-organizing evolution…
We model evolution of plants in a world, made up of different locations, with multiple environments (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive subsets of locations). Each environment (landmass) has temperature, rainfall, and other…
We review the thermal history of the Universe. We obtain a new estimate for the thermal history of the Earth over the past four billion years using a biological thermometer based on (1) a rough estimate of the absolute time calibration of…
If our universe underwent inflation, its entropy during the inflationary phase was substantially lower than it is today. Because a low-entropy state is less likely to be chosen randomly than a high-entropy one, inflation is unlikely to…
Variation in the balance of forces that drive and resist tectonic plate motions allows small terrestrial planet to cooler slower than larger ones. Given that interior cooling affects surface environment, through volcanic/geologic activity,…
In a multiverse context, determining the probability of being in our particular universe depends on estimating its overall habitability compared to other universes with different values of the fundamental constants. One of the most…
Our present-day atmosphere is often used as an analog for potentially habitable exoplanets, but Earth's atmosphere has changed dramatically throughout its 4.5 billion year history. For example, molecular oxygen is abundant in the atmosphere…
The entropy of the observable universe is increasing. Thus, at earlier times the entropy was lower. However, the cosmic microwave background radiation reveals an apparently high entropy universe close to thermal and chemical equilibrium. A…
Shannon's information entropy measures of the uncertainty of an event's outcome. If learning about a system reflects a decrease in uncertainty, then a plausible intuition is that learning should be accompanied by a decrease in the entropy…
Nature's many varied complex systems (including galaxies, stars, planets, life, and society) are islands of order within the increasingly disordered universe. All organized systems are subject to physical, biological or cultural evolution,…
Electric signals have been recently recorded at the Earth's surface with amplitudes appreciably larger than those hitherto reported. Their entropy in natural time is smaller than that, $S_u$, of a ``uniform'' distribution. The same holds…
One of the mainstays of the controversial "rare Earth" hypothesis is the "Goldilocks problem" regarding various parameters describing a habitable planet, partially involving the role of mass extinctions and other catastrophic processes in…
The chemical reactions are very complex, and include oscillation, condensation, catalyst and self-organization, etc. In these case changes of entropy may increase or decrease. The second law of thermodynamics is based on an isolated system…