This week’s lecture had a very similar theme to the previous weeks lecture about the Big Bang Theory. Similar to last week, Professor David Berovici talked about the origin of the Earth and how it was found. He provided evidence of the Big Bang Theory that very much resembled the evidence we mentioned last week. Specifically, the concept that galaxies and other spatial phenomenon’s move away from each other and Olber’s effect, underscore the contradicting arguments of an infinite, old universe. The existence of dark night skies makes us believe the Universe is not necessarily infinite or as old as we think it is. Therefore we begin to question different theories that have been suggested in the past regarding the way the Universe was created.
Category: September 26 (Page 2 of 4)
On Monday October 2nd, the STS department was joined by Ph.D. Student Felix Frey from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. In his presentation, Mr. Frey discussed his work around Industrial Centers in the Arctic, and how he answers the question why soviet planners located cities and industry in hostile environments. The Russian arctic is surprisingly, very densely populated, and a fair amount of research has looked into this question of why. Frey furthers this research by looking into the USSR’s original attempts to tame the hostile environment in addition to other considerations the Soviet Union had for why the north: space, strategic argument, and ideology.
I was intrigued when Professor Fleming told the class that the one of our readings would come from a book written by a Yale Professor titled, The Origin of Everything in 100 Pages (more or less). After hearing how complicated the origin of the universe was by our previous visiting professor, I was excited to hear this shorter rendition of the “origin of everything”. Continue reading
Professor Dave Bercovici of Yale University came to Colby on Tuesday September 26th to discuss origins as it applies to Earth and the evolution of our planet to the point we rest at today. Professor Bercovici took his audience through the rather finite scientific process that guided the formation of Earth, from the big bang, to the collapse and formation of stars, and the formation of planets. What was particularly astounding about the origin of our planet was the necessity of so many, tiny pieces to fall perfectly in order, otherwise we may not have the society we are existing in today.
As an aspiring social theorist, one of the most fascinating things in the world to me is the concept of entropy. Much like last week, I realize that I’m about to completely adulterate and distort a concrete, scientific term and turn it into something that it’s probably not. But hear me out, please.
The way it was explained to me, entropy is the “force,” so to speak, that makes it far more likely that systems will become disorderly as opposed to reordering themselves in a logical manner. Imagine that you drop a bag of marbles on the floor. The odds of the marbles rolling around the room without much of a predictable movement pattern are pretty good. Likewise, the odds of the marbles just bouncing off the floor and all going straight back into the bag are pretty much nonexistent. This is, in part, the idea of irreversibility. The marbles were neatly arranged in the bag, but now they’re on your floor all over the place. This is also, in part, the fundamental building block of a lot of thermodynamic study: Entropy will almost always increase (unless some outside force is applied to the system), and entropy, being a function of the quantity and velocity of minuscule particles, symbolizes randomness. Thus, things will almost always become more and more disorderly. Systems will break down sooner than they will remain in place or even make themselves more orderly.
Personally, I’m pretty convinced that this holds true not only in thermodynamic systems, but in social systems as well. Without some outside forces (a Soviet-funded communist revolution, for example), societies have historically proven themselves to become more and more anarchic as power structures that hold despots in place become less and less established and concrete. Venezuela is the modern example that comes to mind, but I could probably go on and on past that particular country.
The reason I spent so much of this little post discussing entropy is because I believe that the idea that things generally will get more and more disorderly as time goes on is very important. More specifically, I think that it’s very important in the context of figuring out what will happen to our world in the future, whether it be with or without humans walking around. In the lecture, we learned where this little ball of granite came from, and how it was formed. Outside energy forces, such as the sun’s light and gravitational potential energy, held the planet together and allowed life to flourish and for systems such as food chains and biomes to become established and (seemingly) become permanently enshrined. But what’s next? It seems to me that, ecologically speaking at least, we’ve passed the point of maximum order. I think this because I believe that we’re witnessing a slide down into chaos, so it makes logical sense that the peak would be behind us. Oceans are becoming unpredictably temperate, snowy seasons are hitting in quantities and severities that differ wildly from years prior, and tropical monsoons are becoming harder and harder to plan for. We’ve passed the point of maximum order and are witnessing a slow and painful slide into complete chaos.
So it’s for that depressing and cynical reason that I wanted to talk about entropy. Given what we learned in September 26’s lecture, I believe that it’s become apparent that the highest level of order was thousands of years ago, almost certainly before humans began developing increasingly volatile societies built around consumption and weaponry. And therefore, given what we learned in the lecture, I think that it’s pretty reasonable that this planet is in for one chaotic ride going forward.