Physics

Thermodynamics

The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system tends to increase. Living organisms appear to defy this law, maintaining exquisite internal order — but they do so by exporting entropy to their surroundings. Erwin Schrödinger recognized this in 1944: life feeds on negative entropy. Every metabolic pathway, every ion pump, every muscle contraction is a thermodynamic transaction — free energy is consumed to maintain the far-from-equilibrium state that defines being alive.