Essence Of Life

Ever since we get our consciousness, one question always fills our mind and heart with mystery. The problem is "What is the meaning of Life," or we can say "Essence of Life." Today, every religious institute we have, all the priests we have, is there to guide people to know the meaning behind their lives. For some reason, no one can understand; each of them has their solutions with different logic. Some might be very convincing and comforting; others might sound foolish and funny, but all they want is to quench their thirst for knowledge.

I believe that science is the best way to answer this question; it might sound like a spiritual problem, but science's primary definition is to understand nature around us. Of course, spirituality is part of our heart, so it automatically falls under the science to call it a science question. After all, no other problem can drive a scientist crazier than knowing the reason for existence.

The quest for this question might have started thousands of years ago, but I think Sadi Carnot took the first step towards this long ladder. In 1824 he published his book "Reflection of Motive," Where he explained how can we gain maximum efficiency in an engine by understanding the properties of flow of heat famously known as Carnot Engine and around the half-century after Carnot, Rudolf Clausius was inspired to quantify this tendency of heat energy to decay over time.

                          

                         Welcome To The World Of Entropy

 Clausius defines entropy as the internal property that changes as heat energy moves around within a system. This leads to the second law of Thermodynamics.

The second law of thermodynamics states that an isolated system's total entropy can never decrease over time. This means that if you put a hot cup of coffee, it will start to get cool down until its temperature comes in equilibrium with the surrounding. You will never witness a case where the cup of coffee will get hotter and hotter with time without providing any energy, Which means that the entropy of our universe will always increase, things will always go from order to disorder. This is the most fundamental law of physics, something which everyone experiences every day. In fact, the second law of thermodynamics is the law that is considered as the absolute truth.

It was said by Albert Einstein: "The deep impression that classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only theory of the universe content which I am convinced will never be overthrown." 

And the great astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington warned: "If your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can give you no hopes; there is nothing for it but to collapse into deepest humiliation." 

The second law of thermodynamics is the supreme law we have encounter so far. But what does it has to do with the essence of life? It just explains that everything will go from order to disorder that things have the tendency to spread around to be in equilibrium. It is the nature of our universe to lose energy as quickly as possible.

But we should never forget that we all are made up of the same atoms, which were the part of a star once. We are as much as part of the universe as a star, galaxy, or black hole is; there is no reason for us to be an exception to it. Hence we should also follow this pattern.

It turns out we are doing that. Erwin Schrodinger was a very great physicist who also had an interest in the structure and mechanism of life itself. He had some different views about the entropy of life; he said the things usually go from order to disorder. Still, throughout evolution, our cells become more complex, from disorder to order, which is just opposite the second law. So, according to him, life doesn't obey this law.

But it is not the case. Life is also spreading and increasing just like entropy, even though it may seem that it is the opposite case. Let's understand how.

You see, to understand this mechanism, we have to go towards the beginning of life around 3.7 billion years ago when the first life emerged in the ocean, the stromatolites, which were rock-like bacterias that cannot move; we know they were living because they full fill the condition of being alive as discussed in the previous blog. From there, we started to have two kingdoms, plants and animals, which were more complexed than the stromatolites, and from there, life starts to spread. Over many years more complex, being arises, but something strange was happening, life was spread within the ocean. After a few million years, the first reptile appeared in the sea, and some of them tried to come on land, one of the most significant steps in life, which leads the whole life on land we see today and thus more spreading of life on earth. Even though the internal structure of life may seem to violate the second law of thermodynamics, that same structure was also responsible for spreading life. So even though today our structures and cells are more complex than ever before still, we will be ready to start living on different planets too, and it is a matter of time until we will colonize the whole galaxy, and whatever I am saying is a very well calculated future by many futurists like Michio Kaku and Elon Musk.

So we know that life is no exception to the laws of physics, and we should never think that we are special in any way; we are just unique.

So finally, we know that our purpose in life is to spread the information or material we have; how? By the complexion in our bodies allows us to deal with various problems. So smile and be happy that finally, you know that the purpose of life is to spread and follow the disorder's path. By doing the work, we love, like poetry, carpentry, etc. Remember each and everything is contributing towards this extensive mission. Maybe the universe has big plans for us.

Why? We don't know; perhaps one day, when we really do have the answer to this question, I will write another blog on it, but it will only happen in a very long run; till then, stay tuned.