GEROPHYSICS The Physics of Aging
A free, open course · 20 atoms · three depth levels

Why we age, read through the lens of physics.

A living thing is a flame held in a steady shape — order sustained by a relentless flow of energy. Gerophysics asks what happens to that flame over a lifetime: from the Gompertz law and Schrödinger's "negentropy" to entropy, dissipation, biological clocks, and the honest limits of a physics of aging.

20 atoms · 5 blocks three depth levels interactive quizzes free & open no signup required
One course, three depths

Read it at your level

Every atom is written three times over. A single toggle at the top of each page switches the whole lesson between depths — so the same idea meets you where you are, whether you came for the equations or just the intuition.

FOR PHYSICISTS
Full formalism — equations, derivations, and the open theoretical problems.
FOR GERONTOLOGISTS
The biology-facing view — mechanisms, evidence, and how it maps to the hallmarks.
FOR EVERYONE
No math required — clear analogies and the core ideas, plainly told.

Two of the most technical atoms can be skipped by general readers — the course tells you when.

The curriculum

Twenty atoms, five blocks

Each atom is a self-contained interactive page — slides, a short quiz, and an optional AI tutor you can connect with your own API key. Work straight through, or jump to what draws you.

BLOCK 1

Introduction to Gerophysics

What aging actually is, and why a physicist might have something to say about it — from mortality curves to Schrödinger's question and the hallmarks of aging.

BLOCK 2

The Thermodynamic Core

The heart of the course: entropy, the second law, open systems far from equilibrium, dissipative structures, and the competing thermodynamic theories of aging.

BLOCK 3

Information, Stochasticity & Frontier Formalisms

Aging as information loss, the crucial difference between Shannon and thermodynamic entropy, the exact physics of tiny systems, and entropy as a thread through all the hallmarks.

BLOCK 4

Measuring & Modelling Aging

From theory to measurement: biological clocks, entropic biomarkers you can read off a heartbeat, a dynamical-systems model of aging, and the size-laws that span all of life.

BLOCK 5

Interventions & Limits

The payoff and the honest reckoning: interventions through an energy lens, whether aging can be reversed, body temperature as a real thermodynamic dial, and what would make this a science.

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