[Right Wing Professor]

Cat's Cradle, wasn't it? Ice nine and all that?

I think water ice is up to 11 now, but that's pressure driven.There are compunds with 9 polymorphs at ambient pressure and temperature.

At very high pressure, you lose the hydrogen bonding network. Point is, crystallization is a thermodynamically non trivial problem, whereas the entropy of DNA is a staightforward calculation. The idea that evolution gives rise to some major decrease in entropy is simply incorrect.

(BTW, I read Cat's Cradle because Dickerson's Molecular Thermodynamics asked students to prove Ice Nine was impossible. I liked a book, so the proof was a bummer.)

[grey_whiskers]

Point is, crystallization is a thermodynamically non trivial problem, whereas the entropy of DNA is a staightforward calculation.

Fully agreed.

The idea that evolution gives rise to some major decrease in entropy is simply incorrect.

Never said that. I once saw Murry Gell-Mann at a seminar when that subject came up from an audience member, and he rolled his eyes into the next county...

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

I think water ice is up to 11 now, but that's pressure driven

The whole point of ice-nine in the book is that the phase change to the high-melting structure happened at STP...,err, SP but actually somewhat warmer that std temp--otherwise one could not commit suicide by tasting it.

Cheers!