The atmospheric sciences have a word for the moment of peak energy release: latent heat. The term refers to the energy absorbed or released during a phase change, like ice melting into water. Today, I am using it to describe a different kind of thermodynamic tragedy. The fatal shooting of a man who used his own body as a shield. This is not a weather event. It is something more profound.
On Sunday evening, a gunman opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego in the suburb of Mira Mesa. Among the worshippers was Abdul Aziz, a 52-year-old father of three. He did not flee. He did not hide. He placed himself between the shooter and the congregation. He took multiple rounds. He died on the prayer hall floor. The gunman, identified as John Earnest, 19, was arrested after a chase. He is suspected of also setting fire to a nearby mosque two weeks prior.
I must report these facts with precision, because the numbers matter. One dead. Four injured. Multiple lives shattered. But the energy balance of this event extends beyond the immediate casualties. The latent heat of a community's grief, the stored potential of a nation's divisions, the kinetic energy of a lone assailant. All of it is part of a system that is out of equilibrium.
The Islamic Center's imam, Rashed al-Mufti, described Aziz as a quiet man who loved gardening and science. He was a mechanical engineer who immigrated from Egypt in 2005. He had a PhD in thermodynamics. I cannot escape the irony. A man who understood the flow of heat and energy in systems gave his life to absorb the kinetic impact of hatred. His final act was one of phase change: from life to memory, from individual to symbol.
The data on such attacks is chilling. The FBI reports a 67 per cent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States since 2014. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has labelled the current climate a crisis. But these are only the measured values. There is always uncertainty. The true number of incidents, the ones unreported or unclassified, is a ghost in the machine.
We must also consider the energy budget of the perpetrator. John Earnest was a nursing student. He had no known criminal record. He was radicalised online, according to a manifesto police believe he wrote. The internet is a catalyst. It lowers the activation energy for hatred. It provides a feedback loop of validation that can amplify a solitary grievance into a lethal action.
There is no algorithm to predict these events. But if we treat society as a complex system, we can identify the precursors. The warming phase. The pressure build. The eventual release. Our model is incomplete, but the trend is clear. The frequency of these mass shootings in the United States is increasing at a rate that outstrips population growth. The system is approaching a tipping point.
What can be done? Engineers might suggest dampers, buffers, fail-safes. Social scientists propose better mental health care, tighter gun control, more community engagement. These are all necessary, but none sufficient. The fundamental problem is a thermodynamic one. The system is not dissipating its internal stresses efficiently. It is storing energy. And stored energy invariably finds a path to release.
Abdul Aziz understood this. He was a man of science and faith. He knew that energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed. In his last moments, he chose to transform the violence directed at him into a shield for others. That is a kind of latent heat, one that will persist in the memory of his community, in the security camera footage, in the news cycles. The question is whether we can learn from this energy transfer.
I am not a religious scholar. I am a physicist. But I recognise a fundamental law when I see it. The universe tends toward disorder, but human beings have the capacity to locally reverse that trend. Aziz did that. He created a pocket of order in a moment of chaos. The system is now in a new state. We must measure its future trajectory. But first, we must mourn. And then, we must act. The data demands it.
