Physics

Negative Entropy

Schrödinger's concept of negative entropy (negentropy) describes how living systems import order from their environment to maintain and increase their internal organization. This is not a violation of thermodynamics but its most elegant expression: life is a local entropy-reducing process sustained by global entropy production. ATP hydrolysis, the universal energy currency, couples exergonic reactions to endergonic ones — using the free energy released by breaking phosphate bonds to drive the molecular machines that build and repair the organism.