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The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the S in our SURGE acronym.

Thermodynamics is the study of matter and energy, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the universe is running out of usable energy. With each passing moment, the amount of usable energy in the universe grows smaller, leading scientists to the obvious conclusion that one day all the energy will be gone and the universe will die. Like a car, the universe will ultimately run out of gas.

How does that prove that the universe had a beginning?

The First Law Thermodynamics states that the total energy in the universe is constant. In other words, the universe has only a finite amount of energy.

Now if your car has only a finite amount of gas. Whenever the car is running, it continually consumes gas. Would your car be running if you had started it up a infinitely long time ago? No, of course not. It would be out of gas by now.

In the same way, the universe would be out of energy by now if it had been running from all eternity. We still exist which means the universe must have begun sometime in the finite past.

A flashlight is another way to think about the universe. If you leave your flashlight on overnight, what is the intensity of the light in the morning? It is dim because the batteries have used up most of their energy.

The universe only has so much energy left to consume. But since the universe still has some battery life left, it cannot be eternal – it must have had a beginning – for if it were eternal, the battery would have died by now.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is also known as the Law of Entropy, which is a fancy way of saying that nature tends to bring things into disorder. That, with time, things naturally fall apart.

How does the Law of Entropy give us the conclusion that the universe had a beginning?