Mark I. Vuletic

Last updated 21 March 2008

Analysis

The creationist contention is that the second law of thermodynamics states that disorder in the universe always increases, but galaxies and solar systems are ordered structures that supposedly arose from a disordered "explosion" (the Big Bang), which means that the formation of these structures violates the second law of thermodynamics.

(i) The Big Bang was not a disordered explosion, but the smooth and rapid expansion of spacetime containing an almost perfectly uniform distribution of matter. In fact, the distribution of matter in the early universe was so uniform that until the results of the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) came in, cosmologists were hard pressed to explain how this matter could eventually clump up into galaxies (Gribbin 1993). Likening the Big Bang to an explosion is therefore misleading on a number of counts, and there is no reason to expect its results to be anything like the eminently disordered results of an explosion. (Incidentally, COBE revealed tiny irregularities in the early distribution of matter that became the seeds around which galaxies eventually formed).

(ii) Systems like galaxies and solar systems form by dissipating gravitational energy (as in models that employ gravitational attraction in galaxy formation), or by dissipating kinetic energy (as in models that employ shockwaves in galaxy formation), thereby increasing the entropy of the universe as a whole. Since all of these systems are open systems, and their formation results in an increase of the net entropy of the closed system of which they are part (the universe), their formation does not violate the second law of thermodynamics.

Some creationists have asserted that even open systems all tend to become more disordered over time in the absence of a sophisticated conversion mechanism; however, neither is this true (as the example of crystallization is sufficient to show), nor is it what the second law of thermodynamics says, so such creationists do not so much appeal to established scientific law as invent whatever "laws" happen to be convenient for their purposes.

References

Gribbin J. 1993. In the Beginning: After COBE and Before the Big Bang. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company.