Up Next
Back to Show
PBS Space Time
Reversing Entropy with Maxwell's Demon
Season 4
Episode 33
The second law of thermodynamics – the law that entropy must, on average, increase – has been interpreted as the inevitability of the decay of structure. This is … misleading. Structure can develop in one region even as the entropy of the universe rises. Ultimately, entropy is a measure of the availability of free energy – of energy that isn’t hopelessly mixed in thermal equilibrium.
Support Provided By
21:17
We’ve found lots of “habitable” worlds but we don’t know what factors are needed for life.
21:31
What is the graviton, and does it even exist?
19:52
Antimatter drives sound like science fiction, but they may not be as far as you think.
23:22
Does quantum mechanics allow the future to retroactively influence the past or not?
19:14
Life on mars could result in humanity’s destruction via Fermi Paradox.
19:01
How to build a particle collider the size of the solar system.
12:39
One of the most important reasons we go to space is to know our own planet better.
16:18
Is there evidence for the existence of an enormous number of other universes?
17:14
Can something that exists be bad science?
18:56
It may be that our very DNA inherited its twist from the underlying handedness of reality.
17:21
Did God have any choice in creating the world? So asked Albert Einstein
18:19
What if, just before we reach the bottom, we find out that reductionism fails?