[MUSIC] [BIRD CHIRP] There’s only a few unbreakable laws in the universe.

One says that disorder always increases.

We see this play out everywhere.

Unfortunately, some people think this law’s a problem for evolution.

Some people have said that life is basically applied chemistry and chemistry is essentially applied physics So then in that case is biology applied physics?

Although, you might say that physics is applied math so I don't know how far we want to go here.

Well without biology there wouldn’t be physicists, but you have a point.

Like anything else, life obeys the universe’s laws.

A physicist might say you and a bacterium are both ordered bunches of particles you're just a fancier and more complex arrangement.

Surely saying you evolved from something like that breaks the 2nd law?

How could evolution add order and complexity to life?

There’s something you haven’t been told about the 2nd law: it only applies to closed systems, and Earth is not a closed system.

If you took a pan of cookie dough, half frozen, half room temperature and put it in a cold oven, eventually, thanks to entropy, you’d get a bunch of equally uncooked cookies, even though the total amount of energy has remained the same.

But if we turn on the oven, if we add energy to the system, our disordered dough can transform into something deliciously ordered.

The sun is like our oven, it’s constantly showering Earth with more energy than we can use.

That energy changes DNA, plants use it to make more plants, animals make more animals, and we turn it into cookies… all without breaking the law.

Stay Curious