A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals about the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and U niverse

The universes predicted by Boltzmann and Maxwell, and later refined by the thermodynamics of Helmholtz, Gibbs, and Einstein, were universes that evolved into homogeneous soups—soups in which there was no information and energy was no longer free (that is, there was no energy available to perform work).3

Nature normally hates power laws. In ordinary systems all quantities follow bell curves, and correlations decay rapidly, obeying exponential laws. But all that changes if the system is forced to undergo a phase transition. Then power laws emerge—nature’s unmistakable sign that chaos is departing in favor of order.

For reasons we don’t yet understand, the tendency to synchronize is one of the most pervasive drives in the universe, extending from atoms to animals, from people to planets.

The laws which govern how much energy is available are called the laws of thermodynamics and involve a concept called entropy for irreversible thermodynamic processes.