If the amount of matter and energy in the universe is limited then why is it limited to just that amount, no more and no less.

It is. Matter can be neither created or destroyed.

It doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t have the energy to discuss it.

Who said it’s limited?

^^^^ Einstein. It’s the last law of the consrvation of energy.

Particles passing through the “Higgs Boson?” I can’t recall, but particles that passed through that during the explosion of the Big Bang, acquired mass. Others, didn’t.
I don’t believe that the laws of physics allow for more mass, than what was already squished into the size of a large marble.

Thar being said, we do have a few particle accelerators…
We may be able to artificially create mass. At some point…

Why can’t the universe, be infinite?

And there is ,I think, “anti-matter,” for ALL matter. It’s 1.1. I think….
I might be really digging a hole…

Because that is what it started with after the big bang. Why it is the amount it is, is actually still unknown, because the big bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, which would then have annihilated each other into photons. Why there was more matter than antimatter is still a mystery.

You’re really talking about theories, and I think probably confusing the terms used.

For example, saying the amount of matter and energy in the universe is “limited” is really just an assertion, theory, and/or correlate of the only apparent observed behavior that the matter and energy we have studied, seems to not increase without involving some already-existing matter and/or energy.

Put another way, we don’t have evidence of energy or matter just appearing out of nothing, that we know wasn’t in the universe before.

So therefore we can think of the universe as having a limited total amount, because we don’t see any evidence of new stuff just appearing from nothing.

It’s NOT saying that there’s some principle that limits the total amount, other than it seems there’s only so much here, with nothing new teleporting in from outside the universe.

And even then, that’s not absolutely proven.

And “the universe” means “the observed universe”.

Meanwhile, some scientists are theorizing about multiverses . . . and maybe “white holes” where matter and energy IS arriving somehow . . .

Etc . . .

^Virtual particles, appear out of nothing and vanish. I think that’s still theory, but they exist in quantum physics.
They don’t have mass, but they have energy. Temporary energy.

IF they actually exist, it’s possible the particles came from another place within the universe and therefore do not add or subtract, or really effect anything….
It’s also possible the particles could come from another universe, and disappear from ours to another…
So IF they come from outside of the universe, they would add/subtract energy…

Black holes “eat” matter, but the matter is not destroyed it is added to the mass of the black hole.

Einstein and frankly the biggest hitters in physics, all just had mostly theories. Theories that have often been observed, as time has progressed.

There are a lot of wild possibilities, once matter enters a black hole.
It’s event horizon and especially it’s singularity, even gets into time. (I give up, if we add time, to the conversation.)

If a quantum computer, says something exists theoretically, I guess we’ll have to wait until we develop the technology to observe it and give it to the science world for scrutiny.

Yeah, I’m not very familiar with “virtual particles”, but if they’re not “actual” particles, and are “temporary”, then they sound more like effects, and not lasting ones (I’m not clear on that), and they also sound like they’d tend to be extremely small-scale effects, and probably tend to counter each other over time, so I wouldn’t tend to expect them to materially affect the total energy or matter of the universe, though I don’t really know much about what it’s talking about, let alone what the actual implications would be.

^So. Virtual particles occur in a vacuum.
This, I finally looked up.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that the “energy” is not strictly defined, and therefore could (in theory) borrow energy from a vacuum.

Fucking quantum physics…..

Cool to say. But I only barely grasp keyholes of it.
It is often counterintuitive…To me.
As the quantum world, is very different from the real world.

I can’t speak for others, but if I want to feel stupid, I dig deep into some quantum physics!

I used to watch hours of YouTube stuff about it, when I was sick for years with my previous liver. It sucks being the only person actually awake/conscious, in an ICU. No TVs, because most people are really sick/injured/dying…

I actually had an argument about if mass could be “created,” with a guy who knew more than I, and he was adamant that the universe (even if it is infinite, as far as distance the universe could expand) only has the mass that was created by the Big Bang.
He passed away, right before they discovered the Higgs Boson (God Particle.)

It may be possible (at some point,) to recreate some of the things that happened during the explosion, like a false way of giving particles mass.

A chemistry person, may have a different perspective. I can’t/won’t mess with advanced chemistry. Way too much math.

To put it another way, in the beginning, when God said “Let there be light” do you think he had a particular amount of light in mind or did he leave it to chance?

God I love to listen to you people talk like this!