Life In The Universe
...in
the universe, and in particular, the development of intelligent life. I shall
take this to include the human race, even though much of its behaviour
through out history, has been pretty stupid, and not calculated to aid the
survival of the species. Two questions I shall discuss are, 'What is the
probability of life existing else where in the universe?' and, 'How may life
develop in the future?'
It is a matter of common experience, that things get more disordered and chaotic with time.
This observation can be elevated to the status of a law, the so-called Second Law of
Thermodynamics. This says that the total amount of disorder, or entropy, in the universe,
always increases with time. However, the Law refers only to the total amount of disorder. The
order in one body can increase, provided that the amount of disorder in its surroundings
increases by a greater amount. This is what happens in a living being. One can define Life to
be an ordered system that can sustain itself against the tendency to disorder, and can
reproduce itself. That is, it can make similar, but independent, ordered systems. To do these
things, the system must convert energy in some ordered form, like food, sunlight, or electric
power, into disordered energy, in the form of heat. In this way, the system can satisfy the
requirement that the total amount of disorder increases, while, at the
same time, increasing the order in itself and its offspring. A living being
usually has two elements: a set of instructions that tell the system how
to sustain and reproduce itself, and a mechanism to carry out the
instructions. In biology, these two parts are called genes and
metabolism. But it is worth emphasising that there need be nothing
biological about them. For example, a computer virus is a program that
will make copies of itself in the memory of...
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