We Exist BECAUSE the Universe is Decaying, Not In Spite of It: Brian Cox

Professor Brian Cox is an English physicist and Professor of Particle Physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester in the UK. You likely have seen him  narrating one of his many shows on the BBC. His accent is something special - top-tier - second to only BBC Godfather, Sir David Attenborough himself.

Cox hosted Human Universe and The Planets are two of my favourite tv series - but it was on the JRE Podcast #1233 in Jan 2019 that Brian dropped these scriptless cosmic bars off the top, ever so poetically describing our existence in the context of the second law of thermodynamics and entropy. I remember I was at the gym, heaphones in. I dropped the weights, paused, and shed a small tear when I heard the following. It was simple, it was digestable, it was beautiful. I transcribed it later that day...

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The universe began in an extremely ordered state. Through the second law of thermodynamics we are moving towards a more disordered system.

What we strongly suspect is that in the process of going from order to disorder, complexity emerges naturally for a brief period of time. So it's a natural part of the universe that you get complexity, stars and planets and life and civilization. BUT, they exist BECAUSE the universe is decaying. Not in spite of the universe decaying. So our existence in necessarily finite and necessarily time limited. And it is a remarkable thing that that complexity has gotten so far that there are things in the universe that can think and feel and explore it.

You are part of the universe because of the way the laws of nature work. You are allowed to exist but you are allowed to exist for a small amount of time in a potentially infinite universe.

The ingredients in our bodies were assembled out of long-dead stars over billions of years and have assembled themselves spontaneously, temporary structures that can think and feel and explore. And those structures will decay away again at some point, and in the very far future there will be no structures left. So we exist in this little window that we can observe this magnificent universe. Why do you want any more??

The real treasure is in the journey of trying to face the incomprehensible. It's in that realization that it's almost impossible to believe that we exist. That's what you miss out if you don't want to face that.
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What a pleasure to think and feel and explore and exist, even for just an instant. Sometimes I truly do not need anything more.