The History of Earth: SUN

When and how did our Sun appear, and what about the Earth? When did that first form? Welcome to Part 2 of the History of Earth.

Peter Mansfield
3 min readApr 6, 2024
Colour image of a setting sun in an array of oranges and yellows, which represents the origins of the Sun and the Solar System
Sunset © the Author

Entropy

The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that matter, if left to itself, will tend to a state of increasing disorder. That is entropy.

Example: a child’s bedroom may start tidy, but it will end messy.

Actually, I apologise. It is wrong of me to denigrate children in this way. In truth, to see entropy, I only need to look around me. My study is, as ever, in a state of what my wife calls ‘squalor’.

And you should see my car.

But I am comforted by knowing that the chaos I inhabit is consistent with one of the fundamental laws of nature.

Weird

Yet, the universe itself appears to contradict the 2nd Law.

Imagine watching someone blow smoke in an empty room and, instead of it disappearing into the rafters, it forms patterns. One big smoky sphere surrounded by several smaller ones, all of them rotating around the big sphere at different speeds.

That would be weird.

Yet that is what happened in…

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Peter Mansfield

Interested in history, philosophy, theology and 'big picture' stuff.