Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

by Brian Greene

The upshot, anthropomorphized, is that the universe cleverly leverages the gravitational and nuclear forces to wrest a cache of untapped entropy that’s locked up inside of its material constituents. Without gravity, particles that are uniformly dispersed, like an aroma that has filled your house, have attained the highest entropy available. But with gravity, particles that are squeezed into massive and dense balls supported by nuclear fusion drive the entropy tally yet higher. Catalyzed by gravity and executed by the nuclear force, this version of the entropic two-step is danced by matter clear across the universe. It’s a process that has dominated the cosmic choreography since shortly after the big bang, resulting in vast numbers of stars—orderly astronomical structures whose heat and light, in at least one instance, enabled the emergence of life. That development, as we will explore in the next chapter, involves a counterpart to entropy—evolution—that is capable of shaping the most exquisitely complex structures in the universe.