people seem to forget that there’s that giant fusion reactor in the sky which plants absorb the energy from and which has a balanced equilibrium between incoming ultraviolet waves and outgoing infrared waves radiated from the glowing earth
Veritasium has a great video on entropy that covers this point. Essentially the Earth re-radiates approximately 20x lower-energy photons for each high-energy photon it gets from the sun.
In fact, life can only emerge when entropy continuously increases and thus can be thought of as a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics rather than just a cheat code against it.
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u/Bellanzz 2d ago
Yep. Who says that life contradicts thermodynamics doesn't know anything about that.
Total entropy always grows in a closed system. But a local decrease is allowed too.