Can you help me understand "Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy”?

Welcome to premature enlightenment!

You can’t add more energy or mass. All of the heavy elements (e.g., anything with an atomic number higher than lithium IIRC) was created in supernova.

We can convert matter into energy (that’s what happens in an atomic weapon), we have a bit more trouble converting energy in to matter (mainly because of the energy involved), but it all has to come from somewhere.

What cannot be created or destroyed is the matter/energy (they’re related through E = mc^2), not the objects or people themselves. Dust to dust, and all that.

You are stardust. It’s actually kinda cool, isn’t it?

No because I might go crazy lol….

If you really wanna boggle your mind. Think about what surrounds the universe.
Try to envision ABSOLUTELY nothing. It wouldn’t be black or white, because those would be symbols we as humans made.

Wait till your head implodes. Life gets better afterword.

If everything thing is already made and done, as it says that things can only be transferred right?Not created or destroyed. Like I had an idea, its been done. Guy makes a new toy, its was there already and so on…..

Then in a sense if its already laid out, one could say possibly predict the future?

How do you add human interaction to it? is there an equation or formula for it?

Basically, what everything is, is energy. And that can’t be created or destroyed. What you are and what you see around you are that energy formed in multiple complex levels of structures and patterns. All of which have been formed inside a ancient dying star and then added complexity with the forming of the planet, arising of life and so forth. And everything carries information of sort, in micro and macro levels. Thats what you are. Complex levels of different information patterns. You will never disappear, but your mind will. Thats what we mean by death. If you are Christian, you might believe that that minds soars up into another reality.

@oratio Then what is my mind exactly then?

You’re essentially dealing with the First Law of Thermodynamics, which states in simplified form: “Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy and matter in the Universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another.”

If you understand Einstein’s famous equation: E = mC^2, then you may also realize that matter and energy are transformable, one to the other (as other posters have also suggested), and you can therefore imagine, I suppose, that matter and energy exist on a continuum, somewhere between “all energy” and “all matter”. (The theories suggest that at a temperature of absolute zero, molecular motion—i.e., “energy”—would cease.)

As @dpworkin suggests (and as Carl Sagan said before him), you and I truly are “stardust”. We’re all made out of the same “stuff” and the same energy.

And incidentally, we’re breathing the same air that Napoleon breathed, too.

@Steve_A Synergy is the best answer I can give you. If you want to explain it with a soul, it’s your choice. But you can also call what happens in a computer synergy. The body is a machine and a super organism.

The answer is the second law of thermodynamics. Everything trends toward a state of disorder. Death and decay is disorder, and the transformation of energy to a lower or less useful state.

@Snarp does that go along with this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion

that every thing is in constant motion, eventually leading to a lower state as you say?

@Steve_A Although, if I recall right, matter do disappear from existence and likewise come into existence continually. @Snarp or someone might explain that.

@oratio You’re thinking of virtual particle pairs—it’s easiest to think of these as the spontaneous conversion of energy to matter (and an immediate return back to energy when the particles (usually) annihilate each other), they don’t actually come out of nowhere =)

@grumpyfish Yeah, quantum foam and all that. I don’t get what they come from though. Vaccum space et al.

Is that why we cannot make a formula or something to predict things because the mind, being different will not fit in?

synergy you said yes….

@Steve_A I’m not so much up on Brownian Motion, but it does seem to be related. Movement always results in a transfer of energy, and any energy transfer results in the energy being dissipated or converted to a lower state.

@Snarp why is it not accepted or something?

BTW, these two laws also explain why we have ever mounting piles of garbage and every increasing pollution, as well as why all terrestrial energy sources will eventually run out. The sun will run out too, but by the time it does nothing we would recognize as the human species will exist anymore.

@Steve_A You have fallen down the rabbit hole of physics and in order to get out you now need to immerse yourself into the world of quantum physics where you will better understand all of this when you accept the randomness of of what is really going on at a sub atomic level. Yes we can intentionally interact and even modify our world around us but we will never eliminate the random nature of the super-majority of atomic activity around us.

@Steve_A It’s just that I’m a dabbler in physics, not an expert by any stretch, and Brownian motion just isn’t something I’m studied up on. Nothing to do with its level of scientific acceptance

@Snarp basically we are over populated therefore there is more people, we use more, we put more out, garbage,trash etc,,,

And ultimately in the end put less back in….digging ourselves a hole then yes?

@Cruiser My teacher told me a little about quantum physics, something along the lines nothing is really touching, we do not exist…...

But your saying everything is random at the most simplest form?

@Steve_A Well, something like that. Although it doesn’t really require or say anything about overpopulation. Wow, I almost went into a lecture on this, and it goes to some interesting places. But yes, that’s it in a nutshell. We also expend a lot of energy turning matter into forms that are very resilient and tend not to break down in a reasonable (human) time scale.

@Snarp I feel bad for future generations….

@Steve_A Yep! All these sub atomic particles zipping through space, through our bodies etc. are doing so for the most part at random until they bump into another one and their course is forever altered as it has been doing so since the big bang. Same atomic particles that have been here all along just sailing along until it is bumped, nudged or borrowed for a little while. You and I tapping on our keyboards has borrowed a few gazillion atomic particles and or waves to say these few words and when I press the answer button…. off they go!

But what’s really going to blow your mind, given the second law of thermodynamics, is how does the matter in an organism (or person) go from an apparently disordered state before it is in the organism to the relatively orderly state of the organism. There are some interesting explanations and discussions of this, but I’m not really up to par on them just now, so I’ve opened the door, but I must bow out on guiding that journey.

Hm, well I think that might be enough mind blowing for me today lol… :)

@Shield_of_Achilles
@oratio

Actually there is no place where “nothing” exists. That is, there are always photons and neutrinos passing through normal space, so there is no such thing as a true vacuum. In addition, the fabric of spacetime itself is expanding and teeming with energy, which becomes extremely violent at the Planck (smallest) level. (This is your quantum foam).

As for the “space” between universes, it is difficult to know for sure, but the smart money is on some thinking that this isn’t entirely empty either. Here is a visual representation of the various possibilities. (This will really blow your mind.)

In order to understand how life manages to evolve and become more complex while the rest of the universe is runnings down (higher energy states flowing toward entropy) you have to understand the System’s Theory concept of emergence. Don’t be alarmed if you don’t get it right off, the whole scientific community is still trying to wrap its collective mind around this one:

…between Total Order and Total Chaos. Somewhere between those two states is a zone of complexity, where nature teeters on the brink between order and chaos. To use a metaphor, this is like the moment of transition when slush could melt or freeze, or when water might turn to vapour. In this zone very interesting things happen – both in the natural world (at an atomic or larger physical level) in the social world (when social networks form) and in the biological world which is where Gribbin ultimately takes us – showing us how complexity operates in food chains, but also in terms of DNA and evolution.”

Which is why science is very perplexed by turbulence.

@Zuma Cool, thanks for the link. I’ve only read excerpts on this subject before, Gribbin’s book is now added to my Amazon wishlist.

It says specifically that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Let’s say I build a house out of wood. That wood is grown and harvested and milled into timber then I assemble it into a house. Energy is embodied in the wood. Let’s say you leave your stove on and it burns the thing down – the energy has been converted to another form. The law simply says that you cannot create new energy out of nothing, nor can you get rid of it. You can only convert it from one form to another.

Conservation of mass follows the same logic. Mass can neither be created nor destroyed. Therefore, you cannot get something out of nothing or turn something into nothing. You have all these objects in your room. You can move them to a landfill, but they still exist. You could melt down the metals, burn the plastics, that is change them into different types of particles or rearrange them, but in the end you will still have the same mass. Another example is that you can change a glass of water into steam – the total mass you are dealing with remains constant even though you observe a change in state.

I think what @oratio meant was that your brain not your mind “disappears” (is converted into other forms of energy and mass, not deleted from the planet) when you die. Your brain is a bunch of “stuff”, let’s call it matter because my biology ain’t great. Your body is also a bunch of stuff. When you die, let’s say you are cremated. If you are cremated, your body’s embodied energy is converted into heat, light, ash… and released to the environment – you now exist as other stuff.

I think the question of what happens to your mind is a topic for a whole other discussion.

“In a sense if I added more energy or mass, the world could implode like a overfilled air tank?”

See this is the essence of the law. You can’t add more energy or mass to the system because that would violate the law (which says energy can neither be created or destroyed). If you are ‘adding energy’ you are really moving it around.

“Application of Noether’s theorem allows physicists to gain powerful insights into any general theory in physics, by just analyzing the various transformations that would make the form of the laws involved invariant. For example:

a) the invariance of physical systems with respect to spatial translation (in other words, that the laws of physics do not vary with locations in space) gives the law of conservation of linear momentum;

b) invariance with respect to rotation gives the law of conservation of angular momentum;

c) invariance with respect to time translation gives the well-known law of conservation of energy.”

Your brain is matter and energy. Specifically, your brain is cells (made out of the same carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen as your other cells) that zip electrical charges around. Everything you think and feel and remember and know is electrons skipping through your cells.

When you die, you stop putting energy into your body. So your body stops doing stuff. Then the pieces go back into the universe where they came from.

__If something like this is true then I cannot create or destroy then how are we ever alive or dead, if I were to never be created then how can I be killed?__

The matter/energy in your body cannot be destroyed particularly easily. Life and death are a bit irrelevant to matter.

__In a sense if I added more energy or mass, the world could implode like a overfilled air tank?__

Uh, no.

If you put a cat in a sealed container and weighed it, it would weigh exactly the same whether it were alive or dead, since being alive does not mean the cat has any more mass or “energy” than being dead.

If you were somehow able to burn the cat’s body to ash (say, by using a powerful laser), the contents of the container would weigh exactly the same less a small amount because some of the container’s contents would be radiated away in the form of heat. If you were somehow able to recapture (or account for) that lost energy the contents of the container would weigh exactly the same before and after. This would also be true if you could get the cat to undergo a nuclear reaction, only in that case the proportion of mass radiated away would be much larger.

That is what is meant by the conservation of energy.

You, in a sense, are a social construct. Your brain simply holds culturally generated symbolic patterns in what you perceive as your mind. One of those symbols is the concept of “self” (or, from your point of view, “you”). So, when you die that pattern degrades and “alive you” becomes “dead you,” at which time everyone believes that you no longer inhabit your body. And since a social construct is basically a shared belief, “you” have no physical mass per se. So when your brain becomes unable to sustain the pattern that defines “you” the only thing that has changed is that “alive you” becomes “dead you.” There is no loss of mass or energy.

@Steve_A asked: “How do you add human interaction to it? is there an equation or formula for it?”

ahem ahem.. why yes, padwon, from a strictly deterministic perspective, there is a formula for human behavior. it’s not very different from the behavior of non-living things, it’s just more complex.

we’ve discussed it elsewhere. have a look :)

@Zuma I somehow intuitively feel and believe our physical body, especially the brain is like a microwave tower constantly broadcasting energy and even thoughts out to the universe. The activity in our brain that generates and maintains our thought process is entirely energy and part of an electro chemical process and on a sub atomic level this electrical activity that is our thoughts and memories, could possibly be contained as an electrical DNA type memory if you will that could remain intact until those electrons are once again assimilated or recapture back into the universal system. So when we die those electrons are perhaps slowly released back into the universal “system” like helium balloons in the sky and until they are consumed back into the system, they will retain their “color shape and size” perhaps even to be seen again in some way shape or form.

@Cruiser You may be right. Pretty much all of nature, including our brains, has a fractal geometric structure to it. We know that certain fractals like the Sierpinski gasket make highly efficient antennas. Likewise, crystals that share a self-similar structural regularity can also send and receive radio waves. So, if consciousness is some sort of field effect, like electromagnetism, there may be similar resonances from brain to brain.

Alternatively, the mirror neurons which allow us to feel empathy and interpret the symbolic content of language may have us synced-up much more than we realize. In other words, our collective behavior may be organized to a degree that we can meaningfully describe it in terms of participating in a kind of “hive” mind. There is recent research on collective intelligence, the fluid dynamics (self-organization) of traffic, and the ripple effects of social networks that suggests that more may be going on at the collective level than we realize.

Consciousness could be a kind of “metaorganism” co-evolving with the human species in a symbiotic host-parasite relationship. We may just think that we are all unique individuals going about our unique personal business day by day, but in fact, we may be participating in broad cultural and historical processes, kind of like individual nodes in a massively parallel computer.

@Zuma I had never thought to apply fractal geometry to the thought process but when you consider the randomness of nature at the surface as it appears and to take the journey within to the subatomic level of waves and particles of which in the entirety of it all could be fractally intertwined…things such as our thoughts within ourselves and possibly even transmitted outside our minds, are actually anything but individual random events and actually a sum of fractal energy pushing and pulling together in symphony of energy very much in the fashion Yin and Yang that the sages of the Far East for centuries have maintained is happening.

the other night i was crazy drunk at a hippy mansion party. my very good friend and I left the main room where the fire was going to pass through the dinning room which was dark in search of left over alcohol. but we stopped to look out the huge panoramic window at the snow covered trees leading down to the river. there were a lot of trees.. and a lot of snow. some of which had seen the hippies streaking through it just a few hours earlier. it occured to me then, @Zuma, that i was looking at fractals. I don’t know why I never realized it before! I don’t think she understood what i meant. sigh.. but i told her to remember the scene and one day it would make sense to her. (she’s not a sciency person though.. it may take forever and a day)

@ninjacolin @Cruiser Speaking of hippies and fractals, if you want to see fractals big time, drop some LSD.

Once I began to reflect on my old hippy days, it seemed fairly obvious to me that fractals must be intimately involved with consciousness (if, for no other reason than that they seem to exist virtually everywhere in Nature). Barnsley’s fractal information compression algorithms, the use of fractal algorithms to clean up signal-to-noise problems, or of the very, very small amounts of energy required in using chaotic control to hold multi-dimensional concepts stable in one’s mind, all seem like tantalizing aspects of the consciousness puzzle, especially when you look at it in terms of something like Max Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, where the “knower” and the “known” appear to be different aspects of the same self-referential mathematical fabric.

I’m not dropping LSD!!
however, i am tempted

@Zuma Thanks for popping the cork on fractal algorithms and I am curious to see where and or how you (or anyone else here) think you can apply them to the human consciousness puzzle as you put it?

Well I like science but I suck at math so Iam screwed lol….

not to mention you had me lost at “fractal geometric”

I’ll just do some more reading on it.

@Cruiser There is further discussion in this question, and more general discussions of consciousness at this website.

@Steve_A When people say they aren’t good at math, they tend to mean that they aren’t good at arithmetic or algebra. But there are branches of math that are almost entirely visual and conceptual, such as logic, set theory, network analysis, topology and fractal geometry. Now that computers have come into their own, areas of math that depend on heavy computation are now done by machine. Math is now becoming almost a branch of the natural sciences, as computers permit the exploration of mathematical “space.”

Fractal geometry is one such offshoot, and it is more visual and intuitive than anything. Here, for example, is a gallery of my fractal artwork. To get a deeper understanding of all this, check out James Gleick’s Chaos:Making a New Science. This is a good intro to chaos theory, which provides the conceptual foundation for a branch of mathematics that is in the process of revolutionizing nearly every branch of science it touches. You may also find my second link to @Cruiser a great portal to a lot of up-to-date science.

@Zuma So there is hope for me :D?

@Steve_A I say never limit yourself because you think you are bad at math. I was always bad at math, but when I went back to college I found myself excelling in math classes and really getting things I never thought I would get. Turns out what I wasn’t good at was being told “this graph is the answer to this equation” and expected to memorize it. When someone explained what that graph meant, and why that equation made a graph of that shape, I was suddenly good at math. Of course, I’m still way behind on trigonometry and calculus, but now I know I could do it if I had the time.

Fractals in Nature btw