1. Murray Gell-Mann stats that is simplicity that underpins complexity and makes life possible.

2. The number of molecules in a box the size of a matchbox is 10 power 23. A type mole at a temperature of 0 Celsius was four million collisions a second. Air is continuous medium. Joseph Loschmidt calculated the number of molecules in one cubic centimeter of gas at temperature 0 Celsius 2.687 X 10 power 19 molecules. The pressure could be calculated from kinetic theory, in terms of free path, the average speed of the molecules, and so on. Fewer large molecules would have a long free path and if there were many small molecules there would be a shorter mean free path. Statistical mechanics is the application of the law of mechanics in a statistical way to describe the behavior of large numbers of atoms and molecules in gases. If every collision of an atom could be predicted and controlled entropy would be in equilibrium. Collision with uncorrelated atoms increases the amount of entropy.

3. Thermodynamics explain why heat flow from a hotter object to a cooler object. Entropy is heat that cannot be turned into mechanical energy. As entropy increases then information describing the entropy increases. Information can be created and not destroyed. Think of entropy as the amount of order in a system. The more disorder in the system the more entropy in the system. Disorder increases in any closed system. Things wear out as time passes. The time arrow is moving from an ordered past to a disordered present.

4. Image a box divided in two halves divided by a partition. Fill one half with gas and the second half is in a vacuum state. Slide the partition up and the gas will spread uniformly and temperature drops because there is less collision between the atoms. You can restore the original state by pushing the gas back into chamber one using a piston then sliding the partition closed. Heat will increase as the atoms are being compressed closer to each other. The Work of the Piston creates heat in the chamber and heat is dissipated as friction. The system is restored but more heat is dissipated, as a result. The machine cannot be 100% efficient and must dissipate heat into the Universe at large.

5. The arrow of time is built into the laws of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. The Universe is operating in an irreversible way. The universe’s program does not reverse back to its initial state. Atoms don’t retract their path backwards through each Newtonian collision. The gases in the box spread uniformly and settle into equilibrium and maximum entropy is achieved in the system. The final state is said to be an attractor because the system seems to be attracted towards that state. By the time the system reaches equilibrium it has forgotten its initial conditions.

6. Life defies the heat death theory of the Universe where useful energy has been converted into heat. Life creates order and structure out of disorder. Thomson Clausius’s equation show that anywhere there is increased order, it does so at the cost of more disorder somewhere else. A refrigerator exchange heat from fluids being pumped around, the compression is cooling down water into ice and reversing entropy while the heat is dissipating into the environment increasing more entropy.

7. When does a system reach equilibrium? There is no isolate system. The system gets close to equilibrium but never settles perfectly. If hydrogen and hydrogen sulfide are at equilibrium in the boxes and one box is made slightly warmer than the other then the light hydrogen will group near the warmer region. A very small deviation from equilibrium has produced order from chaos. A system that is close to equilibrium will be attracted to a state where the rate at which the entropy is being produced is a minimum. Life would be attracted to intelligence demonstrably because of low entropy.

8. Assume 300 billion bright stars and 300 bright galaxies in the Universe would yield 9,000 X 10 power 19 bright stars in the visible Universe. When divided by Loschmidt number in 450 cubic centimeters of cold air there would be more molecules than stars. The molecules free path mean is 13th millionths of a meter traveling at 460 meters a second. The time for all the molecules to congregate on one side of the matchbox is longer than the existence of the Universe.

9. Boltzmann said, the Milkyway must represent a small local fluctuation away from the equilibrium of the bigger cosmos. Is the cosmos an infinite uniformly expanding bubble?

10. Poincare reccurrence time states that every state of gases will be passed through. If entropy goes up for a while, it must come down, later on, and bring the gas back to its original state. N is the number of molecules. The time to wait to run through the states is 10 power N seconds. The time to run through the states of one cubic centimeter of air is 10 power 19 seconds. The age of the known Universe is 10 power 17 seconds. It is probably for entropy to fall.

Complexity from Chaos

1. Nonequilibrium thermodynamics refers to the flow of energy through a system and the dissipation of heat. Dissipative systems are thought to be irreversible when they follow linear rules. The Universe first started with a smooth and uniform distribution of energy and gases. How did the uniiform state characterized by high disorder move towards the formation of ordered galaxies?

2. What happens just before the onset of Chaos? A system can only be held in an interesting state away from equilibrium if it is dissipative and open to its environment. The early Universe was open to its environment and dissipative with energy convection and broken symmetry. Convection caused short-lived patterns to emerge, breakup, and reform. Stable patterns appeared at the edge of chaos. Energy was flowing through the system and the flow of energy must have been external. The flow of energy is the secret of the existence of the Universe.

3. Equilibrium means death and no energy flow.

4. Dynamics is the study of how things change.

5. The Universe could have started as a singularity where the gravitational field was carrying on an equal and opposite amount of energy. Gravity attracts bodies of mass. The Kinetic energy of particles falling together has a gravitational field. Gravity has a negative energy. The negativity of gravity exactly cancels out the mass-energy of matter.

6. Space is stretching between clusters of galaxies. Space is expanding with time. Space and time relate as describe by Einstein’s General Theory of relativity.

7. The time arrow starts as energy flows out of the sun, at this point thermodynamic activity occurs on the earth. Gravity tells the time arrow the direction it should point. Earth is bathed in energy from the Sun, a dissipative system. Life makes use of the energy maintaining itself far from equilibrium. Systems organize and use the flow of energy. Complex forms are really quite simple.