Life, Energy, and Entropy
This video explores how life connects to energy and entropy. Scientists including Michael Russell and Albert Szent-Györgyi describe life as a process that increases entropy, despite living organisms being highly organized. Plants capture solar energy as sugar; animals convert it to ATP, losing heat at each step. Life may have started as chemical reactions at ocean vents that exploited available energy gradients. Both life and stars increase the universe’s entropy, and in this sense life continues the work started by the stars. Inspired by Sean Carroll’s “The Big Picture.”