Most aspects of the Universe are determined by invisible forces set in motion by its own expansion. Space, time and motion are elicited by the overall expansion of the Universe in the service of thermodynamics and entropy but aggregates of matter seem to indicate less than a complete and smooth transformation. You could imagine the Big Bang as something like spilling a glass of water on a table which would then spread-out evenly (without evaporation) until it was an atom or a few atoms thick. Homogeneity in every direction. The expansion of the Universe has left lumps in the pudding in the form of atoms, stars, planets and the like. It seems that their formation, rather than being an exemplification of order in a chaotic Universe or negentropy is instead fully aligned with entropy and the expansion of the Universe. Mass glombs onto itself and seems to become more orderly under the regime of gravity but is this actually the fabric of space time pulling at the mass, giving it motion and making it congeal into spherical forms (since space-time will be pulling in all directions simultaneously)? Even humans and other living dissipatives seem to be pulled into existence by the expansion where they function in a very minor role to degrade energy gradients and funnel heat into space.

Malcolm Shute writing about thermodynamics:

If you placed, on a flat table, a strong bar magnet, with a load of steel ballbearings stuck to it, and then separated off the ballbearings away from the magnet, they would all roll back again.



You have to do work to separate the ballbearings, against the magnetic field. You could, in theory, reclaim that energy expenditure as the ballbearings return (you could make them turn some sort of turbine, for example).



Similarly with gravitational fields. Masses that are separated want to return to their lower energy state, clumped together, and will release energy (such as in your hypothetical turbine) as they arrive back there.



Thus, separated is the highly unlikely, highly ordered, low entropy state, and clumped is the more likely, less ordered, high entropy state.



The only question that this raises, then, is, “why did the universe start in a highly unlikely, highly ordered, highly separated-out, low entropy state from which we can harvest energy as it all starts to clump together again?”

Gravity or the pulling-in of matter to a center-of-gravity may be caused by an all-surrounding pull on the mass from space-time expansion. The individual atoms cannot be reduced to free-energy but their kinetic energy can be collected into the spinning of a sphere. If the gravity is great enough, as with a star, atoms can be fused releasing a substantial amount of trapped energy.

The Sun – The Great Dissipator

On earth, dissipative structures are funded and built with some of the energy their structures access and convert to less usable forms. The complexity inherent to a dissipative structure could never arise without its function in converting high-grade free energy into waste heat. Entropy is often understood as a conversion of order to disorder as when something dies and decays or falls apart. However, the entropy occurs mostly when the structure of the dissipative is highly ordered and able to convert energy gradient into waste heat. The dissipative structure eventually loses its ability to convert gradient into heat due to wear and tear and/or a completion of gradient conversion and then decays and may become an energy source for other types of disspative structures as when fungi and bacteria consume the bodies of expired organisms. A messy room where nothing is in place may seem like a manifestation of entropy but should rather be seen as decay or the emergence of a dysfunctional state within a dissipative structure that impairs the flow of energy from gradient to waste heat and ultimately to cold sink of space.



In their technological system, humans have incorporated a number of materials like metals, glass and plastics that are seemingly more resilient than the organic counterparts in the ecosystem. But even with their resilient construction, a washing machine or car rarely outlasts the human organic RNA that uses them. Much of the energy flowing through technological cells (human habitations) and human organic cells is used for repair and to maintain ambient physiological conditions for cell components which includes heating, cooling, water supply and removal of wastes. It’s likely that much of the cellular milieu is organized and specified to enhance the functioning and effectiveness of organic RNA just as human habitats are organized to enhance human productivity. Even the human mind has evolved to pay special attention to “order”, making sure things are in their place and walkways are clear so as not to impair the functioning of the cell. Most of the complexity in the technological and ecosystems is meant to optimize flow from the respective energy and resource gradients. Humans and other organisms were formed in nature in a manner materially the same as found in the technological system. Humans find it natural to seek and release energy-bearing materials, either to fund their own movements and behaviors or to fund those of the technological system in which they have temporarily been subsumed.

Fed by fossil fuels, the technological system has grown rapidly and to a massive size. The cells of the technological system, themselves having a precarious existence because of the limited nature of their gradients, are full of organic human RNA (about eight-billion) that must be fed from the ecosystem. The technological system feeds upon the ecosystem as it feeds upon the fossil fuel stocks – putting growth, evolution of complexity, and release of free energy above any other consideration. Humans and other organisms, when confined to the ecosystem, eat and reproduce to the maximum extent without consideration of depleting their food sources.

The organisms never had to evolve a governor for their voracious behaviors because the Sun would always replenish scarcity from the autotrophic populations. All they had to do was consume and reproduce as fast and effectively as possible to remain on life’s stage. Humans never evolved a self-regulatory mechanism, to do so would have required a universal application and enforcement of laws similar to that which exists in an organisms body bringing growth to a halt at a prescribed limit and eliminating cancers as they appear. As a consequence, humans may not see the shortage of fossil fuels coming or may not care, continuing to maximize consumption until the complex dissipative structure of society fails and rapidly decays.

There will most certainly be solar radiation hitting the earth each day to refresh the autotrophs that survive climate-change and human depredations. Depending upon the extent of adversity for plants, natural and cultivated, some humans may still make them a basis for a civilization of limited complexity. However, the decommissioning of the various nuclear facilities will likely require a level of complexity that cannot be maintained without an adequate flow of energy from fossil fuels and this is unlikely to occur once energy becomes scarce and competing uses like maintaining a police/surveillance state, building sea walls and simply feeding the residual population of human RNA that will be squatting in dysfunctional, effectively dead, cells. Overall, the society must maintain a flow of energy and resources sufficient for operation and maintenance to forestall the natural processes of decay that will impede the dissipative function long before one-hundred percent disintegration is achieved. As physics professor Tim Garrett has determined, a society uses approximately 9.3 milliwatts per one dollar of accumulated societal wealth (https://arxiv.org/pdf/0811.1855.pdf). If this flow is diminished the overall metabolism will have difficulty maintaining its “wealth” which will begin to show signs of simplification and decay.

An abandoned cellular structure previously occupied by functioning human RNA. Gravity tugs at the structure while fungi and termites dissipate wood gradient through a slow burn of the structural components. Mechanical forces from other dissipative events (wind currents, floods, solar radiation, freezing) work at the structure creating damage like the peeling paint and roofing. Although the entire structure seems to say “Entropy” there isn’t much heat being generated from its remains. It is mostly decaying and wouldn’t be counted in Garrett’s 9.7 milliwats since all energy that this structure once dissipated (human food, electric, gas, coal, wood) is no longer flowing through it.

The larger a society grows (and it seems to want to grow endlessly) the more energy that is required to maintain the organizational relationships and structures that comprise it and the more integrated and complex it seems to become. Cells blossom and grow along ramifying distribution channels that are always supplying cells with essential metabolites and removing wastes. At some point these structures will fail to deliver the necessities of life as all are undergoing deterioration and cannot be rebuilt, just as human bodies cannot be perpetually rebuilt. At some point, starting anew is vastly less expensive than trying to repair the older system. Generational rebuilding requires a perpetual supply of clean energy which will be sorely lacking for the technological system. But old age may not be what brings the technological system down, a lack of metabolite/RNA transportation brought about by inadequate fuels or an electromagnetic pulse would be equivalent to death by coronary infarction.

Humans have not yet evolved to be completely dependent upon the technological cells in which they reside and many could theoretically survive a simplification of the technological system, but most would likely be caught by surprise before reverting to the older organizational state capable of supplying metabolic needs (permaculture, hunter-gatherer). It is even unlikely, if the technological system were to persist, that humans could survive the arrival of more capable and resilient technological RNA with even less consideration for the natural environment than vestigially possessed by technological humans. In that case humans would become the extinct template for what comes next – if anything. Judging by the dearth of evidence for other “intelligent” life in the Universe, nothing comes next. The developments presented in the short video below will become increasingly unlikely as the ecological substrate continues to be ignored and degraded beyond its ability to support the still essential humans.