GRAVITY, NEGENTROPY and LIFE
Dennis P. Nelson, Ph.D.
25 March 1987
Perhaps it was an unavoidable consequence of evolution in scientific theory, perhaps simply a chance historical event that the concept of energy was born centuries before that of entropy. Whatever the reason for the order of their discovery it is abundantly clear today that the two entities are inseparably bound together in both theory and operation. What is unfortunate in the order of their appearance is that each was colored by the prevailing world view at the time of its introduction into the body of science. Entropy was to become subservient to the prevailing energy theory which had benefited from several hundred years of consolidation. Because of the time and place where entropy was introduced it was cast in a negative light and came to represent the villain of science, the obstacle to continued progress, the enemy of order and the death of the universe. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. The definition and not the actual physical character of entropy gained it this undeserved sinister reputation. In reality the important quantity is its inverse, negentropy, which is the very source of life and power in the universe. This essay will present a case for the redemption and restoration of negative entropy to its proper place in the overall framework of the cosmos.
It has been recognized for centuries that living beings manifest energy processes in the form of both motion and heat. In feudal Europe, observations from the drilling of cannon showed that mechanical energy could be easily and reproducibly converted into thermal energy. The industrial revolution exploded when the steam engine demonstrated that the reverse process, the conversion of heat energy to mechanical energy was also possible. Utopian ideas based on limitless energy supplies from the combustion of coal and oil became popular. Experiments converting motion to heat yielded a theoretical conversion factor between the two energy forms. Problems arose, however, when attempts were made to construct heat engines of theoretical 100% efficiency. Despite all attempts at invention only a fraction of the theoretically available energy could be converted into mechanical energy. The seemingly irresistible advance of science had encountered a disturbing and perhaps insurmountable obstacle. Carnot provided a theoretical explanation for this limitation which was to change science forever and lead to a new field of discovery called thermodynamics, today little more than a century old.
Carnot had discovered entropy. He showed that in a cyclic process converting heat to motion, back to heat then motion again, eventually the process would stall; no more conversions could be made. During every energy transaction something is lost. Although the total energy is conserved throughout, the quality of that energy, the available energy, has decreased. Today we accept this limitation in stride and design around it but at the time of its discovery it had major impact on the current world view, marking the end to many an inventor’s dream of perpetual motion machines. It is easy to see why this discovery wreaked havoc upon the philosophies of the day and why entropy was cast in such a villainous light, since it presented a major impediment to the continued march of mechanics and dynamics which had dominated science since Newton. A law codifying irreversible processes in the world caused a major break with the past.
Clausius first used the term entropy in his famous statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics “Die Entropie der Welt strebt einem Maximum zu.” It is interesting to note here that he says the entropy of the world, not the universe, tends towards a maximum. None the less he casts entropy in a negative (disordering) role, i.e. all spontaneous processes in a closed system result in increased disorder of the system. This is the accepted view of the second law today. The problem with this interpretation is that it applies only to closed systems, whereas the majority of processes dealing with life and daily human activities are only meaningful in the context of open systems, i.e. exchange of matter and energy with the environment. Consider the human body as a living system. It appears to violate the second law in that it does not spontaneously degrade. This is only because it continually extracts energy from its environment in the form of absorbed heat and chemical energy such as food, fuel and oxygen. It also discards waste products such as carbon dioxide, waste heat and excreted fluids and solids into the environment. If any of these conduits of energy exchange with the environment is blocked the body quickly dies and decays. The body is, in fact, extracting low entropy energy from the environment and discarding an equivalent amount of high entropy energy back into the environment.
With the above background information we are ready to develop the concept of entropy in open (living) systems where its real power of explanation resides. But first we must redefine entropy in terms of its inverse, negentropy, which is in reality its constructive, productive and organizational potential, if not living aspect. Negentropy does not represent a truly negative quantity but merely a negative increment in that quantity, a decrease rather than an increase in entropy.
Negentropy and Life
Consider for a moment the possibility that life, by definition, is simply the ability of a system to tap the negative entropy of an energy cascade or stream. Living systems are then, in a sense, simply heat engines capable of extracting chemical and thermal energy from the environment and using these sources for internal mechanical, chemical, temperature and organizational requirements. Erwin Schroedinger in his book “What is Life” makes a very strong case for this viewpoint. He says that living things extract negentropy — not energy — from their environment and by doing so maintain their life. Although energy is concurrently transferred to and from the environment, this is merely incidental to the negentropy gain and is necessary for energy balance as required by thermodynamic’s first law, conservation of energy. Negentropy is therefore the active factor in the process, energy is passive. One might say that the negentropy gradient drives the energy flow between living system and their surroundings, much as a temperature gradient drives the heat flow between two bodies. Once equilibrium is reached, heat no longer flows. If negentropic equilibrium is reached between a system and its environment, energy no longer flows and the system dies. Thermodynamic equilibrium as opposed to steady state equilibrium (which is really a continuous series of irreversible nonequilibrium processes) is therefore a death sentence for living systems.
Energy seems to be a quantitative measure, or amount, negentropy a measure of quality or availability. This distinction between negentropy and energy may in some sense parallel the intensive and extensive properties by which energies are measured in classical physics, such as (volts x amps), (temperature x heat capacity), (mass x velocity), etc. The negentropic content of an energy source seems to determine whether it can be used for a specific organizational purpose, i.e. whether energy will flow under the proposed conditions. We often speak of an energy crisis in our society when, in fact, we are really faced with a negentropy crisis. A critical look at the definition of energy, reveals that there is plenty around. There is enough energy stored in the heat capacity of water in the oceans to meet our needs for centuries. It is not quality, concentrated energy however, rather it is high in entropy and as such is useful for little more than buffering the earth’s temperature. Mechanical or chemical processes require energy of much higher quality (lower entropy) than thermal processes.
Heterotrophs such as mammalian species require a constant input of low entropy chemical energy to maintain life, i.e., internal organization, temperature and motion. Low entropy (high negentropy) energy is provided by autotrophs capable of photosynthesis and by a food chain which concentrates chemical energy. The sun is the ultimate source of all negentropy or “life” on this planet by providing a stream of radiant energy which can be converted to food and oxygen by autotrophic organisms. In biochemistry examples abound of energetically unfavorable reactions (such as reduction in an oxygen environment) which are driven by coupling to an endogenous source of reductive potential such as the co-factor NADH. These cycles achieve reduction of substrates at the expense of regenerating NADH via essential oxidative pathways in the cell. It is clear that for living systems this constant throughput of negentropy from the environment sustains the organism in a reduced state even in an overwhelmingly oxidizing environment.
If we examine the Gibbs equation, ΔG = ΔH – T x ΔS in the context of nonequilibrium systems we can gain some useful insight. ΔG is the change in Gibbs free energy, the driving force behind all chemical reactions; ΔH is the change in enthalpy or overall heat content of the products and reactants; and ΔS is the change in entropy, or disorder of the system. In classical thermodynamics this equation is related to the equilibrium constant (K) for a reaction in a closed system ΔG = -R x T x Ln(K) where (T) is the absolute temperature in Kelvin; (R) is the gas constant; and (Ln(K)) is the natural logarithm of the equilibrium constant (K). The equation shows that the free energy change, ΔG which drives the reaction to its new equilibrium state can be the result of both enthalpic and entropic changes occurring between the products and reactants. We see that a negative change in entropy -ΔS can drive a forward reaction with a positive ΔG and an exothermic, negative ΔH. The key concept here is that energy transactions between open systems and their environment need not internalize the positive ΔS term as must happen in a closed system but rather can transfer it to the surroundings provided an equivalent external source of negentropy, -ΔS, is available. When the Gibbs equation applies to negentropy transactions between living systems and their environment, an increment of negentropy gain can be distributed between chemical, ordering and motion effects represented by ΔG and heat effects represented by -ΔH. Depending on the match up between the energy levels of the source and the receiving system, the ΔH term will be larger or smaller. For a very close match the transaction will be highly efficient and nearly reversible with a maximum ΔG term and a minimum ΔH term. The greater the mismatch the larger the ΔH term.
In summary, a living system is able to tap an appropriate potential gradient in a negentropic cascade to provide itself with organizational and thermal energy in the form of ΔG and ΔH. In a negentropy gradient energy flows, causing a change in the chemical, electrical, organizational or gravitational potential of the system or the production of heat. Thus negentropy potentials are the driving force behind all energy transactions between living systems and the biosphere.
The Universal Entropy Cycle
It is important now to discuss the source of negentropy vital to all living processes on earth. I have already defined a living system as one able to utilize a negentropy stream or cascade to provide for its own internal order or motion. By this definition the earth itself is a living system since it has ordered flows of ocean and atmospheric currents, derived from the negentropy throughput of solar energy. It is generally accepted that the flux of solar radiant energy falling on the earth is the product of nuclear reactions burning the sun’s nuclear fuel. It must be recognized however that the sun’s gravitational field may play a more important role in this process than has previously been recognized. In fact it may be the fundamental source of solar energy.
Before nuclear reactions were understood, William Thompson explained the complete energy output of the sun using potential energy arguments alone. He calculated that given the mass and diameter of the sun, and assuming the mass to be uniformly distributed throughout the volume, that a collapse of a few kilometers per year in diameter would result in an energy conversion and output consistent with the measured energy flux from the sun. At that rate of collapse the sun would continue to shine for thousands of years even in the absence of any mass accretion from the surrounding space. Thus one needs only gravity to account for solar energy. The problem arises when one compares Thompson’s time frame with the known age of the universe. In the absence of nuclear reactions the sun should have totally collapsed millions of years ago.
Freeman Dyson helps us to understand the time delays preventing total gravitational collapse. He enumerates three checks called distance, spin and nuclear hangups which prevent runaway gravitational collapse. The size hangup results from the immense distances in space and the wide dispersal of mass, resulting in very weak gravitational fields between stellar bodies. The spin hangup opposes gravitational collapse by counterbalancing gravitational attraction with centrifugal force. The nuclear hangup occurs when gravitational collapse has proceeded to a point where the gravitational field is strong enough to create the intense pressures needed to sustain the burning of hydrogen to helium. The heat produced by these nuclear fusion reactions must be dissipated outward consequently forcing the solar mass apart. Not until all the nuclear fuel is consumed can the process of collapse continue. We can now understand the time-frame of solar energy processes and hopefully have a better feel for the role of the sun’s gravitational field in maintaining its energy output if not the production of its nuclear fuel in the first place.
Universal Entropy Conservation
We are now at the point of asking why, if all fundamental laws of physics are conservation laws, is entropy really unidirectional and what are the consequences of this anisotropy? The following laws of physics are all conservation laws: conservation of mass, energy, charge, spin, momentum, angular momentum, frequency, etc. Why then does entropy always increase; why is it not also conserved? Remember the statement of Clausius that the entropy of the “world” seeks a maximum. Perhaps the problem lies not in the reality but in the interpretation and scope of the second law. Perhaps it is only on earth and in other regions of space with comparable gravitational fields that entropy spontaneously increases. If such is the case then all increases in entropy in our region of space must in fact be counterbalanced by corresponding decreases in other parts of the universe. This paper argues that entropy is conserved in the universe, i.e. all entropy increases occurring on earth are reversed somewhere else. The implication is that there is some mechanism in the universe for spontaneously reversing entropy or creating negentropy. That mechanism appears to involve intense gravitational fields in a cyclic process. Gravity would be the “source” of negentropy and therefore of life itself. Entropy is unidirectional because gravity is unidirectional. Time is also unidirectional because entropy and gravity are unidirectional. Time unfolds in the direction of the future only because the entropy cascade is an irreversible process resulting from the fact that the attractive force of gravity is unidirectional.
The entropy cascade can be compared to the global water cycle which is made possible by water evaporating at sea level and precipitating at some height above sea level. As the water returns to sea level the difference in gravitational potential can be used in increments to drive water wheels, turbines or other devices to create mechanical energy, extracting the potential energy from the gravitational field. I should mention here that energy conversions involving gravitational fields can be nearly 100% efficient. The process is cyclic in that once the water reaches sea level it can evaporate starting the cycle again. One cannot however run the cascade backwards. Except in certain paintings by Escher, water does not spontaneously run uphill. Some external force, namely sunlight, is required to start the cycle again.
An analogous situation exists with negentropy. As sunlight arrives from the sun it is low in entropy, rich in negentropy. When it interacts with matter on the earth it loses its order gaining entropy with each successive energy transaction. Negentropy extraction may occur as a single large event or in several smaller increments analogous to one large powerful water wheel or several smaller water wheels taping the same vertical fall of water. Those living organisms which are capable of coupling their life processes to the negentropy cascade order themselves at the expense of disorder to the stream. Not all organisms need to tap the sunlight directly. As long as the negentropy has been captured and stored by some other living system (autotrophs for example) the ordering potential is available to other organisms. Eventually all the useful energy (negentropy) has been extracted from the sunlight by the earth and its living systems, through their life processes. These living systems dump an equivalent amount of high entropy, low quality, waste energy into the surrounding space in the form of infrared and microwave radiation. Energy is conserved in the process while negentropy reaches the bottom of its cascade. Cosmic background radiation represents the “sea level” for photons participating in entropy transfer across space.
Only one link remains to complete the negentropy cycle. That critical link in the theory is the reversal of the entropy cascade to allow the cycle to continue. This is where gravitation becomes so extremely important and why the negentropy cycle runs in one direction only. Photons and particles excreted as waste energy from the earth are high in entropy and form the “sea level” pool of cosmic background radiation. They have been stripped of their negentropy and although ubiquitous have little value except for their contribution to gravitational fields. Major concentrations of mass in the universe possess extremely strong gravitational fields. Black holes have such intense gravities that they capture photons. Accretion of cosmic debris onto gravitational bodies throughout the universe may play a role in sustaining their fields and energy output. Perhaps gravity transforms low energy, long wavelength, high entropy photons into high energy, short wavelength, low entropy radiation. Energy conversions involving gravitational fields are nearly reversible and consequently highly efficient. This would indicate that gravitational fields are very high in negentropy.
Freeman Dyson has suggested that electromagnetic radiation has an entropy content proportional to its wavelength; the higher the frequency the lower the entropy. The idea of a photon cascade from high frequency to low frequency is supported by the fact that in all interactions of photons with matter when the high frequency photon is absorbed, part of the energy is transferred to the matter and the rest is reradiated as a photon of longer wavelength. Fluorescent or phosphorescent wavelengths are always longer than their excitation wavelengths. This is a consequence of the second law but also shows that photons contain negentropy. Gravitational forces or gravitons must necessarily contain zero entropy. By becoming part of a gravitational field high entropy photons are transformed into low entropy photons and their entropic content is decreased. When entropy is considered on a universal scale with local increases and decreases it appears to be a conserved quantity like energy. The universe resembles a cosmic hot air furnace perpetually in motion with negentropy the living, driving force and gravity the ordering source. Intense gravitational fields represent the combustion chamber where the spent photons are recharged with negentropy and redistributed throughout the system. Once these carriers have transferred all their negentropy to living systems in the distribution space and reach equilibrium with their environment they are sucked back into the combustion chamber via the cold air return where they are recharged with negentropy and begin the cycle anew. Spent photons are not themselves recharged but contribute to gravitational fields which provides the environment for the genesis of new high quality photons.
Conclusions
Some may argue that since the universe is constantly expanding a closed universe model such as that presented here is impossible and that the expansion of the universe is proof positive of the second law. This is a tautology however since one of the chief arguments for the expanding universe theory is the second law itself. The big bang theorists maintain that the universe came into existence through a physical discontinuity sometime in the past reminiscent of the creationist’s “ex nihilo” doctrine. Some say that the universe is now actually running down and may begin to contract sometime in the future. That should have interesting consequences for the second law! The arguments for the expanding universe and big bang theories are tenuous at best. Three principal arguments exist:
1) An expanding universe becomes more diffuse and uniform with time and therefore obeys the second law;
(2) the cosmic microwave background radiation is a remnant of the big bang;
(3) the galactic redshift is a doppler effect caused by receding light emitting bodies.
These arguments raise additional problems of explanation:
(1) If entropy is conserved in the universe then an expanding universe is unnecessary to account for the second law;
(2) The cosmic background radiation may not be a remnant of the big bang; but rather high entropy, waste electromagnetic energy in the galactic “cold air return;”
(3) The cosmic redshift may not be a doppler effect at all but rather a gravitational redshift caused by the varying gravitational fields of the emitting bodies and/or gravitational curvature of the intervening space;
(4) The unequal distribution of light emitting bodies in space is difficult to explain on the basis of a big bang alone;
From the preceding arguments the following conclusions follow:
(1) Entropy is conserved in the universe; the second law is a local phenomenon;
(2) Negentropic transactions are irreversible because they are based on a waterfall like cascade;
(3) Gravity is the source of negentropy which is the source of chemical, electrical and organization potential in all living beings, since energy only flows in a negentropy gradient;
(4) Only intense gravitational fields can reverse entropy; Perhaps black holes represent the openings of worm holes or conduits in hyperspace which capture cosmic debris and high entropy photons and then conduct them through hyperspace to emerge somewhere else in the universe in the interior of stars where they contribute to the stellar gravitational fields and hence the negentropy output of stars;
(5) Time’s arrow results from the direction of the negentropy cascade which is due to the unidirectional attractive force of gravity. Time as well as entropy is reversed in black holes;
(6) Photons carry negentropy in the distribution cascade decreasing in frequency and becoming red-shifted to longer wave-lengths at each step in the cascade during which they gain entropy and loose negentropy;
(7) Negentropy and frequency are related and may be equivalent since (E = h x ν) where(E) is the photon energy, (h) is Planck’s Constant and (ν) is the photon frequency;
(8) Negentropy needs a new name and “Order” has too many popular connotations to be rigorous — how about Vitality?