What Is The Link Between Human Evolution And The Universe? | Order And Disorder | Progress

Professor Jim Al-Khalili unwraps the evolutionary histories responsible for the modern human condition, as currently represented by our sophistication in energy manipulation and information technology.

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00:00 Intro
02:35 Energy
25:15 Entropy #Documentary #Technology

[euanmackintosh]

So beautifully explained that even a very ordinary person like myself can grasp the wonder of it. Brilliant.

[salehsaleh]

I am sure a great deal of ENTROPY was required to produce this work of art. Brilliant. Thank You Professor

[josephcollins]

"falling apart", "disorder", "it gets worse", "order to disorder" etc. From the beginning of this video (wonderful, by the way, and I love Jim!) I was thinking, "Why? Those are negative words. Seems more like a restrictive state (a block of steel or our body) going towards freedom and beauty."

[dylan_curious]

Wow, this video really puts things into perspective! It's fascinating to think about how we humans and our technology are really just tapping into the natural flow of energy from order to disorder in the universe. And now we're on the brink of harnessing the ultimate form of energy through fusion, which could offer us almost unlimited power. But as the video points out, all our efforts are just a tiny blip in the grand scheme of things. The universe is always unraveling and we're just trying to preserve a tiny pocket of order. It's both humbling and inspiring to think about our place in the cosmos. And the idea that information is a fundamental part of the universe is mind-blowing. Thanks for sharing this thought-provoking video!

[sazennonumber]

Now I wonder if that newly created chaos, which came from order, would get orderly again. For example, a tree looses leaves in fall and then the decaying leaves give energy back to the tree for the new leaves to be created. I found it very inspiring to hear that the heat emitting energies stay (cluster) together. Thank you for uploading. Jim Al-Khalili always a pleasure to watch and listen to.

[adzaaahhh]

Jim A-K, the Attenborough of physics. AKA Legend.

[johnwiltshire]

Try dropping that jug on the space station to see if it then becomes more "disordered". On Earth, it shatters because a force is applied to it by the impact on the floor.

Now try melting a chocolate rabbit to increase its "disorder" and then realize that heat has now been concentrated in the chocolate so the entropy has decreased. Now pour the chocolate into a rabbit mold and let it cool. The heat loss is energy spreading out so entropy increases... but.. we now have a nicely ordered chocolate rabbit. Here's what's going on:

Consider a pack of playing cards that has been sorted into suit order. Now give it a good shuffle so that the pack is now "disordered" and then returned to a uniform ambient temperature. Has the shuffle increased the entropy of the pack? NO! It has not. In this case, the concept of "order" is merely a human convention. Now take a pen and write the numbers 1 to 52 on each card in turn. The pack is now in "order" again. It follows that the concept of "order" is so familiar in everyday experiences that its use in science is dangerously misleading. As explained in the first part of the video, entropy is a measure of the spreading out of energy concentrations.

[grantwilcox]

Professor Jim Al-Khalili great show love the videos explaining our universe.

[shahidulislamtapu]

Sir, you also played the piano well. I am a new fan of you and knowledge seeker as i also have a brain which always hungry of knowledge. Thank you so much for enriching the world of knowledge.

[edypriyo]

We are the universe, expressing ourself as human for a little while, 80 years - 120 years

[maryearll]

I've one complaint - why wasn't Professor Jim around in 1960's when I was at school ? ❤

[sidclark]

I wondered who this guy was when he appeared in a promo for Veely documentaries where he says that everything the viewer knows is completely wrong. Finally identified him by accidently clicking on this video here.

[alpcrdh]

Top shelf video right here.. will check out more of your stuff.

[farmerjohn]

For life to begin, the conditions on earth had to be right. To be right, a long chain of events had to occur in the universe since the beginning.

[realeyesrealizereallies]

Looking at the Earth at night shows how successful we've been, or does it show a cancerous cell, a civilization on the brink of self destruction...

[amorosogombe]

Professor, what do you think about the conciousness-first theories of the universe that say actually, space, time, matter and energy are interpretations of an eternal preexisting mind so mind came before matter?

[DocuFlow]

Excellent explanation, thank you. I wish there was less background music though, the feel was very 90s and was distracting.

[arthurwieczorek]

"What is the link between evolution and the universe?" In one word, entropy. Let's call entropy the natural tendency for high potential energy move to a lower potential energy state. Life is a means of speed up that process. Life, given enough time, is equivlent to one match starting a forest fire. How does the match come to be? In two words, abiogenesis and evolution.

[Matz]

Oh boy, some guy is going to give me the secrets of the Universe, right here on the tube. Ain't the internet amazing?

[cybervigilante]

So where did the initial order come from? Yeah, I know - Big Bang. But that's a non-explanation which just pushed the question backwards. Play entropy back to the beginning, and the universe was massively complex and ordered. So where did that order come from?