生命、宇宙与万物之源：探索熵增法则下的生命起源与终极命运
接着聊一聊熵的话题，昨天说到熵增定律是自然界最基本、最无法违背的基本规律。而生命的特点就是要尽力维持自己的低熵状态。在这个过程中，它需要从周围的环境中获取低熵状态的能量。用薛定谔的话说，生命就是以低熵为食。虽然在这个过程中，生命体尽最大的可能减缓了自身熵增加的速度。但是如果将地球作为一个整体，生命实际上是增加了熵增的速度。
说到这里聊一点题外话，就是关于道家思想。其实道家的很多思想是很超前的。比如说他对万物起源于无的认识，就和现代科学中基本粒子可以从真空中借用能量创生有异曲同工、不谋而合之妙。不过，道家特别是后来在道家基础上形成的道教感觉多少还是在道的领悟有些偏差，他们都将人体和环境交换能量这件事情视为对生命的破坏，认为要达到长生不老，升仙的目的，就要尽量的少与外界交换能量。因为他们认为这些从外界摄入的能量是导致身体混乱的根源，所以他们的修行方式很多都是禁欲主义的，例如闭关，辟谷也就是很长时间不进食等。而这与科学是背道而驰的。如果不进食的话，就不能摄入负熵，并不能保持自身的生命秩序，而只能坐视自身的熵增加，这样是不可能达到长生不老的。
既然宇宙的目的是增加熵，而我们这些生命也是宇宙孕育出来的。那么生命的终极目的是不是就是要加快熵增的进程呢？如果是这样的话，那么生命的诞生就是一件必然要发生的事情，而只要存在能量梯度，存在能量传递，只要这样的环境能够存在足够长的时间就会诞生生命。如果从这个角度出发，虽然现在关于生命起源，还有多种学说，比较吸引眼球的，就是地球的生命是由陨石从外太空带来的，但这种说法并没有解决根本问题。就像说人类是由外星人创造的一样，只是把这个问题推的更远呢，那外星人又是谁创造的呢？生命在另一个星球上又是如何形成的呢？实际上什么问题都没有回答。而另一个越来越受到公认的起源，就是生命源于远古地球的海底热泉。海底热泉就是一个个的微型的火山口，火山口可以喷出富含矿物质的高温水流。而周围海水的温度就要低的很多。于是，在海底热泉的周围就形成了温度的梯度，也就产生了持续不断的能量流动。当然，仅仅靠这些微小的海底热泉，将海水加热的方式让地球的能量达到平衡，也就是熵增达到最大，恐怕到太阳系毁灭的那一天，也是无法完成的。为了加快熵增这一过程，在海底热泉的周围诞生了原始的生命——细胞。这些细胞在生长繁殖自身的同时，也从热泉作为的环境中摄取负熵，并将他们转化成高熵状态的能量，加快了熵增的这一过程。
同样我们人类现在的活动其实也是这一过程的一部分。所以在很多环保人士看来，人类的发展破坏了环境，破坏了雨林，改变了气候，仿佛人类就是地球的癌症。不过这也许正是大自然和宇宙希望人类去做的事情。人类为了追求自己的欲望，不断深入的发展科技，探寻世界的本质，其实是在有效率的增加宇宙的熵，某种意义上也是在替天行道。所以那些环保主义者的主张看似亲近自然，某种意义上实际上是在逆天而行。当然以上只是我的一些一家之言，也算是胡思乱想。
这个想法让我想起了非常比较著名的太空题材RPG游戏——《质量效应》。游戏的背景设定在不算遥远的未来，人类发现了远古外星文明留下的质量中继器，利用暗能量实银河系内的超光速航行，在银河系中自由穿梭，并和其他的银河文明建立了联系。不过就在这时，来自宇宙深处的一种机械文明——收割者前来毁灭银河系内所有有机生命体构成的文明。尽管他们的目的并不清楚，不过，主创人员透露的想法就是，收割者从某种意义上来说也并非邪恶。他们毁灭有机生命文明是阻止这些文明进一步滥用暗能量，而让宇宙过早的陷入大撕裂末日而毁灭。
如果熵增加到最大的意味着宇宙的毁灭，为什么宇宙会利用生命体来加快这一进程呢？也许就可以用道家物极必反的想法来解释。当熵增达到最大，没有能量可以利用的时候，也就无法再去再区分任何的变化，那么时间也就不存在了，而且空间也处处一样均匀，空间也变得无法区分而不再存在了。这就回到了宇宙初生的状态，可以开启新的循环了吧？这又和道家思想当中提倡人得到的最高境界，就是要回归到婴儿的状态，不谋而合了。
Moving on to the topic of entropy, I said yesterday that the law of entropy increase is the most basic and inviolable fundamental law of nature. And the thing about life is that it tries to maintain its low entropy. In doing so, it needs to draw energy from its surroundings in a low-entropy state. In Schrodinger's words, life feeds on low entropy. In the process, though, life slows its entropy as much as possible. But if you look at Earth as a whole, life is actually increasing the rate of entropy.
Talking about a little digress here, is about Taoist thought. In fact, many Taoist ideas are very advanced. For example, his understanding that all things originate from nothing is similar to the modern science that elementary particles can be created by borrowing energy from the vacuum. However, Taoism, especially the Taoist feeling formed later on the basis of Taoism, is somewhat biased in the understanding of the Tao, they all regard the exchange of energy between the human body and the environment as the destruction of life, and believe that in order to achieve the purpose of immortality and ascension, it is necessary to exchange energy with the outside world as little as possible. Because they believe that these energy intake from the outside world is the source of the body's chaos, many of their practices are ascetic, such as the retreat, the valley, which means not eating for a long time. And that runs counter to science. If you don't eat, you can't take in negative entropy, and you can't maintain your own life order, but you can only sit by and watch your entropy increase, so it is impossible to achieve immortality.
Since the purpose of the universe is to increase entropy, we are also born in the universe. So is the ultimate purpose of life to speed up the process of entropy? If that's the case, then the birth of life is something that has to happen, and as long as there is an energy gradient, there is an energy transfer, and as long as such an environment can exist long enough, life will be born. From this point of view, although there are many theories about the origin of life, the more eye-catching one is that life on Earth was brought by meteorites from outer space, but this statement does not solve the fundamental problem. It's like saying that humans were created by aliens, but pushing the question further, who created the aliens? How could life form on another planet? No questions were actually answered. Another increasingly accepted origin is that life originated in hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor of ancient Earth. Hydrothermal vents are tiny craters that spew out hot, mineral-rich water. The surrounding water is much cooler. As a result, a temperature gradient is created around the hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, creating a constant flow of energy. Of course, just relying on these tiny undersea hot springs to heat the sea water in a way that makes the Earth's energy balance, that is, the entropy increase to the maximum, I am afraid that the day of the destruction of the solar system can not be completed. In order to speed up the process of increasing entropy, primitive life - cells - were born around hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. As these cells grow and reproduce themselves, they also absorb negative entropy from the environment of the hot spring and convert them into energy in a high entropy state, accelerating the process of entropy increase.
Our current activities are also part of this process. So in the eyes of many environmentalists, human development destroys the environment, destroys the rainforest, changes the climate, as if human beings are the cancer of the earth. But maybe that's what nature and the universe want us to do. In order to pursue their own desires, human beings continue to deepen the development of science and technology and explore the nature of the world, in fact, they are effectively increasing the entropy of the universe, and in a sense, they are doing justice for heaven. So those environmentalists' claims seem to be close to nature, but in a sense they are actually contrary to heaven. Of course, the above is just some of my own words, but also be a wild imagination.
This idea reminds me of a very famous space RPG called Mass Effect. The background of the game is set in the not-too-distant future, where humans have discovered a mass repeater left by an ancient alien civilization, and use dark energy to travel faster than light within the galaxy, freely travel through the galaxy, and establish contact with other galactic civilizations. But just then, a mechanical civilization from the depths of space, the Reapers, came to destroy all the civilizations made of organic life in the galaxy. Although their purpose is not clear, the idea revealed by the creators is that the Reapers are not evil in some sense. Their destruction of organic life civilizations is to prevent these civilizations from further abusing dark energy and causing the universe to prematurely fall into the Big Rip apocalypse.
If increasing entropy to the maximum would mean the destruction of the universe, why would the universe use life to speed up the process? Perhaps it can be explained by the Taoist idea that things are always the opposite. When entropy increases to the maximum and there is no energy to use, it is no longer possible to distinguish any changes, then time does not exist, and space is the same everywhere, and space becomes indistinguishable and no longer exists. So we're back to the beginning of the universe, and we can start a new cycle, right? This is in line with Daoist thought which advocates the highest state of human attainment, which is to return to the state of infancy.