‘Evolutionary Process from Chaos to Order’

My comments are in response to Prof. Daniel E. Atkinson’s letter (June 8) “Evolutionary Process from Chaos to Order.”

In trying to explain the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Atkinson made some claims that are simply not true. His example of a star being more ordered than the cloud from which it was formed is inappropriate. In a gravitational field, a dispersed gas cloud has a lower entropy, the physical measure of disorder, than does the star it forms when it collapses.

As a matter of fact, the law of increasing entropy (disorder), the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is what causes the cloud to collapse through gravitational attraction. Astronomical bodies become spherical, rather than cubic, because the entropy is highest in this shape. This same rule applies to the hydrogen-to-helium transformation that Atkinson describes.

But events like these should not be confused with the steps required to produce life from non-life. Stars and helium form naturally, because of entropy. But naturally occurring chemical reactions, also ruled by entropy, prevent DNA from producing proteins, the basic structure of all life.

There is no natural process that lines up the radical groups needed to form protein. That’s why, even under controlled laboratory conditions, scientists have not been able to produce living molecules.

To Atkinson’s question “Has anyone seen a planet revert to a cloud of gas and dust?” I ask, “Has anyone seen a group of non-living molecules revert to a living protein molecule?”

EDWARD S. HUSTON

Quartz Hill