24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Energy Needed to Power Civilization
The numerical results of my calculations show that the quantities of energy required for permanent survival and communication are surprisingly modest. For a society with the same complexity as the present human society on Earth, starting from the present time and continuing forever, the total reserve of energy required is about equal to the energy now radiated by the Sun in eight hours. The total energy reserve contained in the Sun would be sufficient to support forever a society with a compl... 1 
notes
notesThere is an overabundance of energy in the universe.
24 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Stones are Chaos
The difference between a piece of stone and an atom is that an atom is highly organised, whereas the stone is not. The atom is a pattern, and the molecule is a pattern, and the crystal is a pattem; but the stone, although it is made up of these pattems, is just a mere confusion. It's only when life appears that you begin to get organisation on a larger scale. Life takes the atoms and molecules and crystals; but, instead of making a mess of them like the stone, it combines them into new and mo...
1 Despite being made up of atoms, molecules, and crystals, which are organization.
23 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Life Emerges from the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Every species of living thing can make a copy of itself by exchanging energy and matter with its surroundings. One feature common to all such examples of spontaneous “self-replication” is their statistical irreversibility: clearly, it is much more likely that one bacterium should turn into two than that two should somehow spontaneously revert back into one. From the standpoint of physics, this observation contains an intriguing hint of how the properties of self-replicators must be constr...Folksonomies: life thermodynamics
Folksonomies: life thermodynamics
Hypothesis that life is the result of needing to dissipate energy that builds up.
21 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Hell Must be Isothermal
.. . hell must be isothermal, for otherwise the resident engineers and physical chemists (of which there must be some) could set up a heat engine to run a refrigerator to cool off a portion of their surroundings to any desired temperature. Folksonomies: thermodynamics
Folksonomies: thermodynamics
1 notes
notesFunny.
30 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Life is "Enclaves" in a Whirlpool of Chaos
THE FOLLOWING IS QUOTED FROM BERGAN EVANS
ON NORBERT WEINER, NUCLEAR PHYSICIST
The second concept Wiener has to establish is that of entropy. Probability is a mathematical concept, coming from statistics. Entropy comes from physics. It is the assertion-- established logically and experimentally-- that the universe, by its nature, is "running down", moving toward a state of inert uniformity devoid of form, matter, hierarchy or differentiation.
That is, in any given situation, less organizat...
1 Life swirls in the opposite direction of increasing entropy in the Universe.
07 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Understanding Heat and Temperature
Our sense of touch tells us quite definitely that one
body is hot and another cold. But this is a purely quali-
tative criterion, not sufficient for a quantitative descrip-
tion and sometimes even ambiguous. This is shown by
a well-known experiment: we have three vessels con-
taining, respectively, cold, warm and hot water. If we
dip one hand into the cold water and the other into the
hot, we receive a message from the first that it is cold
and from the second that it is hot. If we th... 1 notes
notesAn excellent description of the distinction between the two.
03 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Fossil Fuels are Humanity's "Starter"
Now we have comprehended and peeled off the layers of petals
which disclosed not only that physical energy is conserved but also
that it is ever increasingly deposited as a fossil-fuel savings account
aboard our Spaceship Earth through photosynthesis and
progressive, complex, topsoil fossilization buried ever deeper
within Earth's crust by frost, wind, flood, volcanoes, and earthquake
upheavals. We have thus discovered also that we can make all of
humanity successful through science's world-e... 1 notes
notesThey are here to get the engine of sustainable energy running, we have to get the engine running before they are exhausted or the car of civilization is dead.
03 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
A Logical Process to Understand True Wealth
I have tried out the following intellectual filtering procedure with
both multi-thousand general public audiences and with audiences
of only a hundred or so advanced scholars and have never
experienced disagreement with my progression of residual
conclusions. I proceed as follows: I am going to make a series of
analytical statements to you, and if anyone disagrees with me on
any statement we will discard that statement. Only those of all my
statements which remain 100 per cent unprotected wil... 1 notes
notesIt is not the artificial concept of wealth we have invented, but the resources we use to combat the forces of entropy and survive.
08 AUG 2013 by ideonexus
What's Good for a Business Can be Bad for Society
Every bit in a computer is a wannabe Maxwell’s Demon, separating the state of “one” from the state of “zero” for a while, at a cost. A computer on a network can also act like a wannabe demon if it tries to sort data from networked people into one or the other side of some imaginary door, while pretending there is no cost or risk involved. For instance, a Siren Server might allow only those who would be cheap to insure through a doorway (to become insured) in order to make a supernat... 1 notes
notesBusinesses that refuse to insure high-risk individuals leave the burden of those individuals on the whole community.
30 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
Odd Sympathy
Laid up in bed during a brief illness and idly watching two clocks mounted in one case, Huygens noticed something strange: No matter how the pendulums started out, eventually they always ended up swinging in exactly opposite directions. Huygens wondered whether this odd sympathy might solve the longitude problem. Perhaps, he thought, two such clocks could regulate each other. If one got dirty, for instance, and started running slow, the influence of the other clock would lessen this effect. I... 1 notes
notesMathematician Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock found that two clocks on the same wall will invariably come into counter-synchronization with one another. This is because of thermodynamics and their connection via the support beam in the wall.
