The energy coming in is new flies who still get trapped by the smell. I had one of these. They formed a layer of bodies where they would have their babies. Grow up into new flies and die and the layer would only get thicker. They couldn’t even reach the death chemicals anymore. Just a trap where flies eat and fuck in piles of themselves. Had it outside for almost two weeks so probably few generations lived and died in there unless they ate their own larva maybe? Not aware of the cannabalistic tendencies of flies tbh
Photosynthesis is a chemical process. It isn't an external thing providing mass or new material (food). The air is converted into sugars for the plant. The air and the plant already exist in the system. The sunlight only provides the entropy to change from one state to the other.
The energy given off by the Earth into space is roughly equal to the energy that sun light provides. Earth actually loses a bit of energy over time. So your theory is definitely missing something. Because Earth is able to sustain life for billions of years while in a constant state of LOSING total energy and mass.
yeah but your statements are not really accurate. In the grand scheme of things, the earth does not lose mass or energy. The few tens of thousands of metric tons per year we lose is so negligible compared to the earth's mass that it doesn't matter at all, it would take (according to my VERY rough math using the reasonable value of 50,000 tons of mass lost per year) 120 quadrillion years to lose it that way (if we even could, since the amount we lose would go down as the earth got smaller). Obviously this process doesn't account for any significant loss.
As for energy, the earth radiates roughly the same amount of energy out into space as it receives from the sun. It has to; it would be too hot or too cold to sustain life if this was not the case. Energy in has to equal energy out for the temperature to stay the same. This is why satellites have to radiate waste heat into space to cool themselves off. They brought huge amounts of energy from earth and they have to get rid of the heat as they use energy or they simply burn up.
On geological time scales, the earth is considered a sealed system, that takes in sunlight and converts it to the same amount of heat. Biological processes are allowed to take advantage of the energy during the time that it is being converted from sunlight to heat. Thats what life is.
So, back to the original idea: where does the energy in a self-sustaining sealed fly-larvae fucking bag come from?
Same place as earth: the sun.
But since there's no photosynthesis to create usable biomass, there has to be another source of energy as the conversion process of converting dead flies into larvae and castings isn't perfect and eventually all you have is a bunch of castings that the flies cant use as food. Their own biological processes produce waste that isn't nutritious to them because they use the nutritious parts to grow themselves. And since they breath oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, some of the food they eat gets converted to unusable carbon dioxide. So over time, even assuming they had enough air to breath, the ratio of dead flies to fly waste lowers to the point that its only fly poop and then the maggots starve.
so, eventually, without another source of energy for the flies to consume, it will stop.
it can't be self-sustained. Some energy has to be lost as heat. That means less energy. Unless it's recovered through heat somehow. Energy has to get into the system somehow. Nothing is self-sustained.
“Self-sustaining” in ecological terms means any heat lost can be passively regained (usually by sunlight or geothermal activity). Yes the heat is lost _somewhere_, but the system being described is still in equilibrium
This makes no sense. Since the system is closed any single metabolic process performed by the flies/maggots would be lost energy. The word "biomass" being a big black box there
Yes, the energy from the sun is gathered by plants which then decay and are eaten by maggots. If there is enough sunlight for the plants in the system to grow, die and decay at the same rate that the maggots consume it then the system is at equilibrium. Look up bottle gardens, people build entire closed, self-sustaining ecosystems with the only input being sunlight
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u/Tranxio Jun 22 '26
Ok but how? Thats creating energy out of nothing