lonelygirl said:
Indigo,
How can order come out of chaos?
Sorry, I don't hold really strong opinions on this sort of thing, I guess I ought to justify my background.
Raised by a mother who is atheist/kind of into wiccan type things, though completely open about its fallacies and recent development- certainly not your usually wiccan. She who was above and all the rest a scientist.
From the ages of about 8 to 12 though I was devoutly Christian, and completely separate of anyone else's influence really, I guess I went to a C of E school but they weren't very strongly Christian. At my most devout I would go to church regularly- twice a day (including Sunday service) and kept the Sabbath day (not hard
) and would pray everyday for God to forgive my mother. I wasn't perhaps what you'd call a fundamentalist (still believed in the big bang etc) but I was devout.
Then I had a few years of super atheism- think of a short Dawkins and you're almost there. Yuck! How arrogant could I be? (Just in case your wondering the answer is "extremely". Now it's slid down the scale to just "annoyingly so")
And then there's now. An atheist, a nihilist and a determinist but without any absolute truths I really don't see the point in anyone claiming to be "right", if they (they meaning anybody) are happy and not bothering anybody I see no reason to preach about or pretend to be "right". It might not be "evil" (that relies on absolutes) but it isn't nice
ANYWAYS
Order from chaos. It's remarkably simple but I'm not that great at explaining things so apologies if I screw up. Simply put: There is no order from chaos, but the terms must be looked at from the widest perspective possible. This is order as in the scientific term and it deals with energy, mass or for the sake of ease, matter; not how tidy my bedroom is (which occasionally does get ordered...I SWEAR IT DOES!)
Energy, mass- it's all made of the same stuff really (or at leas they're interchangeable) so we could call it matter. But I prefer stuff, so I'll role with it.
You have the big bang. It start off with all the stuff in existence in one point. That is order. Concentration equals order. Nevar forget!!!11!!!one
*ahem*
So all the stuff there is is in one place. From there it spreads out. Order into chaos.
However it doesn't spread out all too evenly. Lumpyness occurs, it's still less ordered than before, and energy is required to make it happen.
I'm not really too clued up on astro physics so I'll skip to the next level I know about, I'd be lying is I said I really had a clue about the birth of stars. However there are some things I am aware about, lumpiness of matter, gravity and the way generally speaking stuff tries to be less exciting. In m mind I can visualise how this cold lead to stars but I would be the first to admit that I have certain doubts on this scale. Certainly to me it seems that although stuff might have started sticking together energy was being dissipated out and chemically things were getting more manageable so maybe there are no upsets there if you run it through a calculator.
Assume we have our galaxies now, and our stars and things. Fabulous, they're like the glitter sequin dress I always wanted... (stay on topic, stay on topic) These stars are concentrated! But getting less so. Some of the stuff they kick out hit the planets. One of the planets is earth.
Earth. As a closed system (that is, to look at earth's surface and nothing more) it is indeed getting more ordered. Bastards. That ooze on the surface of the pond is turning into complex lifeforms. Chaos into order. But the universe isn't a closed system. Something is going into it to allow this to happen, and that is heat, gas and magma from the core of the earth, and heat from the sun. The two sources are dissipating. The energy imput into the system allows for order within the system, but the universe as a whole thinks it's getting more chaotic, so no upsets there.
Apologies for my tone if it was in any way patronizing (I feel a bit like an idiot trying to explain things here- you're mainly all my elders and I hope that we are all at least peers), I think I have the habit unfortunately (makes me sound like a jackass)
. Also I'm sorry if my explanation was a bit crap and I'm really sorry it was a bit(!) incomplete and simplistic, I can only deal with what I've covered. Finally I'm sorry it's soooooo long. I am clearly the god of wasted sentences and pointless asides.
But I hope it helped!
EDIT: Done a quick bit of research into the formation of stars. Seems to be that due to minute inequalities in the distribution of matter gravity just causes things to start sticking together, using energy. Once it's all stuck together it starts to use energy from it's own mass. So no worries there.
