Snow Algae found in ice spires means

[RJM Corbet]

I'm not anti science or space exploration and appreciate your explanation. You can donate £12 to some Amazon forest tree rescue organisation if you want to.

 

[StilLearning]

Ok, I'll do that, and make it a regular donation. Sorry about if I came at that like a bull in a china shop, Facebook has left me short on patience with people. Well. People - who assume they're right on all things without having to actually learn about them - have left me short of patience with people, via Facebook.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

I think there are a lot of discoveries in space and other places where it is hard to see what is going that relate directly to what is happening on the Earth's surface everyday. The messing up the Earth zone that we occupy has been going on for 500 years. In the last 50 years the myth of sustainability has been torn to tatters. It's going to take a lot more than money to put things back on track. That means a lot of research that no one wants to pay for. At this point in time if we want sustainability we would have to return three quarters of what we take out each time and leave that three quarters alone for a hundred years. Kill 1 tree, plant 3 trees and leave them alone for a hundred years. Watch a tree die from bug bites, plant 3 more trees and leave them alone. Not going to happen. No one is saving the planet, the planet has seen far worse and is doing just fine. The extreme life forms that exist in the frozen methane hydrates or hydrothermal vents are probably what the second string junior varsity teams look like. There are plenty of life forms that don't like what we like just waiting for some freed up space for their turn at bat. The only thing that is dying on this planet is the zone we live in and the plants and animals that live in it with us. There are plenty of other life zones on this planet. We are trying to save our own way of living, not the planet's. There was plenty of life in the oceans before the hard shell and the internal skeleton life came along. Jellyfish do just fine in low oxygen environments. Insects probably have no use for us either.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Ok, I'll do that, and make it a regular donation. Sorry about if I came at that like a bull in a china shop, Facebook has left me short on patience with people. Well. People - who assume they're right on all things without having to actually learn about them - have left me short of patience with people, via Facebook.

Facebook!

Genuinely thank you for the update about Enceladus. I look forward to doing more research on the subject.

It's going to take a lot more than money to put things back on track. That means a lot of research that no one wants to pay for

Bingo!

No one is saving the planet,

'Just' saving the Amazon would do for now, imo.

the planet has seen far worse and is doing just fine.

Not really. There have always been lots of trees?

(post edited)

 

[Venusian Broon]

Ok, well look, I am surprised at how everything has managed to organise itself. It is all energy? A photon is not a thing; it is pure energy? An atom is a state of energy organised at various states and levels, etc? It contains no solid material.

To me, the whole organisation of energy from the big bang onwards appears to be anti-entropic? Energy naturally tends towards the lowest level? Death, not life is the natural state? Life is energy organised not just to avoid entropy, but to reverse entropy. Life 'grows'. At least while it is growing. Ok, it's all a mystery to me.

Google: 'does life violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics' and its throws up a lot of confusing and conflicting replies. Nothing that is easy to get a handle on. Just words really. But life is anti-entropic, by any understanding?

There's no proper value that can be called energy either, really? I think that to define energy either as some sort of mathematical
potential or detritus is not really getting towards any proper sort of definition.

These are interesting questions, and I am looking forward to hearing from people who have reasonable knowledge of the science.

Realy RJM! Do you want me to attempt an answer and discuss (I'm tempted, but I will probably write an essay)

Seriously, your questions are fascinating; although some of them I can clear up, others require a more open-ended discussion!

 

[RJM Corbet]

Realy RJM! Do you want me to attempt an answer and discuss (I'm tempted, but I will probably write an essay)

Seriously, your questions are fascinating; although some of them I can clear up, others require a more open-ended discussion!

Thanks VB. Essay away! You write well enough to keep it understandable. Let's take it from there, lol

 

[Venusian Broon]

Thanks VB. Essay away! You write well enough to keep it understandable. Let's take it from there, lol

Unfortunately I have to do a garage tidy this afternoon, but I will be mulling over everything, so that hopefully it will all splurge out quickly afterwards

 

[hitmouse]

I would say based on how everything we are discovering is disrupting the old ideas of how the universe is put together the less likely the old ideas are the only game in town.

I think this statement lacks rigour, and the logic is dubious.
Science and knowledge mostly advance in stages. Generally, there is an appreciation of where there are gaps or uncertainties in our knowledge. There are some surprises, but complete revolutions are uncommon.

 

[hitmouse]

But life is anti-entropic, by any understanding?

No it isn't. There is a lot of bollocks on the internet about this, sometimes based on some elementary misunderstanding of physics, but also frequently related to an apparently willful need to justify mystical/religious positions.

 

[RJM Corbet]

There is a lot of bollocks on the internet about this, sometimes based on some elementary misunderstanding of physics,

So please take a moment to give me your understanding of the physics of the apparently anti-entropic need for anything to attach to anything else, instead of simply not bothering to go to all that trouble of forming atoms, etc? Why should anything originate? Why do the proton/electron charges exactly balance? Entropy has no desire towards cohesion. Entropy desires dissolution?

I'm quite anxious to be educated. Fire away.

@StilLearning

Thanks. I got a lot from this. Seems new mission will take 20yrs to start sending results ... so ...

 

[hitmouse]

OK.

Firstly, entropy does not desire anything at all. There is no such thing as anti-entropic need. Entropy and thermodynamics are simply mathematical descriptions of how energy behaves. Biological systems do not form atoms. They do form molecules.

The thing about entropy is that one has to thing in terms of the whole system, i.e. the Universe. The overall entropy of the universe is increasing. Expenditure of energy in any form contributes to this. Lifting a weight up on to a shelf, assembling a Lego Deathstar, or building an Opera House, all superficially appear anti-entropic because there is locally increased order, but the point is that the work put in to reach that state will always have increased the net entropy of the universe. Biological systems are fundamentally no different. Living organisms are complex assemblages of highly organised bio-molecules. A large amount of energy has to be expended to build and maintain these systems (food, photosynthesis, respiration etc) and in fact a living organism is a pretty good entropy machine (products of respiration, body heat, excretion etc.) The instability of these systems is demonstrated by the fact that they start to degrade rapidly once the energy supply stops i.e. at death, and why death occurs if the basic fuel for respiration is interrupted.

Grateful if any of the physicists here wish to correct my simplifications. I am just a humble zoologist.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Entropy and thermodynamics are simply mathematical descriptions of how energy behaves.

I know this. It's my whole point.

Let's start with sound. It exists. The note B on the western music scale is derived (inevitably) from picking a 'sound' and calling it 'middle C'. It all goes from there. So you take a unit (of pure energy) and call it a photon and everything works from there. Because it works. Therefore the proton and electron charge exactly balance, because that is the maths. That is the definition and the quantization. And it works because it works. It's there because it's there and it's true because it's true.

But, to continue the music metaphor: there are other ways and scales of music, that quantize sound differently -- not using middle C as 'centre'. So the whole 'quantization' of reality is not possibly the end-all. There are very big gaps and it's based on measurement of 'nature' to suit the natural understanding of reality of our limited five senses.

Biological systems do not form atoms. They do form molecules.

But why did atoms choose to form?

Living organisms are complex assemblages of highly organised bio-molecules.

Why did they just not bother to assemble?

The overall entropy of the universe is increasing.

You throw a ball, it goes up then comes down. So?

 

[hitmouse]

I know this. It's my whole point.

Let's start with sound. It exists. The note B on the western music scale is derived (inevitably) from picking a 'sound' and calling it 'middle C'. It all goes from there. So you take a unit (of pure energy) and call it a photon and everything works from there. Because it works. Therefore the proton and electron charge exactly balance, because that is the maths. That is the definition and the quantization. And it works because it works. It's there because it's there and it's true because it's true.

But, to continue the music metaphor: there are other ways and scales of music, that quantize sound differently -- not using middle C as 'centre'. So the whole 'quantization' of reality is not possibly the end-all. There are very big gaps and it's based on measurement of 'nature' to suit the natural understanding of reality of our limited five senses.

There has been a lot of quite deep philosophical thought about the reality of perception (Is the taste of an apple more real than its shape? etc, etc.) and in particular, whether pure mathematics is fundamental or a function of human perception. I am not an authority on this, though it makes for some interesting reading.

Also look up the "Anthropic Principle" which may be relevant to your query.

But why did atoms choose to form?

Atoms didn't choose anything. The fact of the matter is that after the big bang the universe rapidly became heterogeneous (according to current mainstream theory) and out of that emerged matter, suns, and a variety of atoms. Some Chronners know a lot more about astrophysics than me and may be willing to chip in here.

Why did they just not bother to assemble?

Again, personal feeling and choice do not really apply to molecules. However, there are some natural situations where complex organic molecules will spontaneously start to form.

You throw a ball, it goes up then comes down. So?

That is a good illustration of how you can put work into a system to increase its potential energy, which is roughly analogous to order. This is released when the ball comes down. The point is that energy has inevitably been lost during this process, which is never 100% efficient, in other words, the system does not exactly return to its starting state. Entropy has increased.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Atoms didn't choose anything. The fact of the matter is that after the big bang the universe rapidly became heterogeneous (according to current mainstream theory) and out of that emerged matter, suns, and a variety of atoms.

Again, personal feeling and choice do not really apply to molecules. However, there are some natural situations where complex organic molecules will spontaneously start to form.

Don't be silly. Of course I know molecules/atoms don't have personality choice. The point is: what reason does energy have to cohere, when it is easier and more logical for it not to do so? Why does the proton/electron charge balance so exactly, to make it all happen?

That is a good illustration of how you can put work into a system to increase its potential energy, which is roughly analogous to order. This is released when the ball comes down. The point is that energy has inevitably been lost during this process, which is never 100% efficient, in other words, the system does not exactly return to its starting state.

But where's the extra energy sent it up, in the first place?

Also look up the "Anthropic Principle" which may be relevant to your query.

It is because it is? Great scientific explanation, Prof ...

 

[Venusian Broon]

Right-o, have time now. Let's get down to it.

Ok, well look, I am surprised at how everything has managed to organise itself. It is all energy? A photon is not a thing; it is pure energy?

I'm not sure how metaphysical you want to get here. A photon is a thing. It's a quanta of Electromagnetic radiation. An elemental particle. It's our current understanding on what we think light is (or X- and Gamma rays, infrared and radio etc.) And it has an energy - it is not energy. It's energy is related to the photon by its frequency.

Of course it's a thing that is really just our model of reality, so we expect it to do X,Y when we do A,B to it etc. So we can interact with these things and observe them. But then I could say the same about a macroscopic object like a tiger or a pansy, if a photon isn't a thing then neither are those.

What photons do tell us is that we are just not equipped to understand the deep underlying reality of our universe. They are both waves and particles. And when we look at other elementary particles, such as fermions, they too exhibit the same paradoxical position. We're just not equipped to understand the fundamental nature of the nano-universe.

An atom is a state of energy organised at various states and levels, etc? It contains no solid material.

No I disagree. An neutral atom consists of a nucleus with a positive charge, say +N, which has bound to it N electrons. Both of these objects have mass and an electrostatic (well electromagnetic really, given that the electron is reasonably free to move about) interaction. It is the wave-like nature of the electron (the nucleons are wavelike too, however they are bound in a very small and tight area by the strong nuclear force) and this EM interaction, given that positive and negative charges attract between both, that give rise to the electron 'wanting' to be bound in very specific and discrete orbits. or quantum states, near the nucleus. Now due to observation, we further believe Pauli's exclusion principle holds - that no two electrons can co-exist in the same quantum state. So if another electron comes along, it is forced to go into another quantum state or orbit. Hence, from these humble beginnings we can see, at least I hope you can see, that is these set of forces and principles that make something 'solid'.

So an atom is a collection of particles and fields that, depending on the energetic conditions, will organise itself into various configurations. Again energy is a property of the system, like the photon above. It is a useful property for physicists because we can use it to calculate low-temperature ground states and a whole bunch of other things.

But wait a minute, your saying 'What about the Energy mass equivalence. E = mass times c squared. Mass is just energy. Right?'

No, not really.

So, to give a specific example, when a Uranium 235 atom undergoes fission a lot can happen, but essentially the Uranium nucleus splits into two smaller daughter nuclei. It also emits somewhere between 2-4 neutrons...but including these, it can be seen that the mass of the resultant fission products is less than the original 235 nucleus. So some mass has gone...but gone into producing photons. Photons that have an energy that equates to the energy of the missing mass that the above relativistic equation demands. We can therefore use these energetic photons in further interactions to 'tap into nuclear energy'.

To me, the whole organisation of energy from the big bang onwards appears to be anti-entropic? Energy naturally tends towards the lowest level? Death, not life is the natural state? Life is energy organised not just to avoid entropy, but to reverse entropy. Life 'grows'. At least while it is growing. Ok, it's all a mystery to me.

We should be clear on what we mean by entropy. It is a confusing topic, I admit. (I never really took to statistics )

In brief it is a property of a thermodynamic system. It is essentially related to the number of possible configurations of a system. I don't think the term 'anti-entropic' really makes sense from that perspective (can their be a system of things that cannot have any different configurations at all?). But, I think you are meaning something to do with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

So again let's be clear what that is: The entropy of an isolated system never decreases. (My italics.) Such isolated systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium - the state with maximum entropy.

Non-isolated systems can decrease entropy, provided that the other systems connected to this one increase their entropy by at least the same amount. So in the case of life, if it is decreasing entropy (I'll have to think about that, I'm not sure) it is doing so because it is relying on a big connected system that is increasing entropy (in our case the Sun...probably dramatically more.)

Note that as far as we know the universe is not connected to anything else, so it would seem that makes it isolated, therefore in the broadest and most general case, we think universal entropy must always be increasing. And therefore all the various sub-systems of the universe will be chained to this.


--


I think there is mis-match when it comes to Entropy, generally because it is usually introduced to people using the thought experiment of mixing of two different gases in a specific volume. You know the drill: start with a container with a sheet of wood splitting two different gases apart. You then remove the sheet and then both gases start to mix. As time goes on the gases just mix perfectly and we would be shocked to see, at some point down the line the original combination of gas A on one side and gas B on the other. Life seems to be something akin to the original starting point coming around again.

I don't think this analogy makes sense. Bear with me.

You see the problem with the gas box analogy is that we assume that both gas molecules are like little atoms or balls that don't interact with each other, other than bouncing off each other. In the real universe we have a bunch of laws we believe operate. So negative and positive charge attract, masses attract, different configurations of atoms will 'prefer' to be in certain configuration much more so than in other ways: Carbons atoms love to 'hold hands' with each other. Oxygen is highly reactive etc. The configuration space of something as complex as the universe has to take these laws into account. It's going to skew the possible set of configurations.

Maybe an extremely simple example. Take two fair die. Numbered 1 to 6. In the configuration space of rolling the two die and adding the result, rolling a 2 or a 12 are most unlikely. But rolling a 7 is most likely. It is so because of the property of adding two independent numbers and the type of dice we have.

We clearly have a similar situation, thermodynamic and entropy-wise, albeit it's much much more complex here in our universe!

At our current time, we are very aware that carbon absolutely loves to form a vast number of structures at the sort of temperatures and conditions we observe, along with other elements. And it is this massive numbers of situations that organic compounds form (and then interact together with) that must be related to the emergence of life in the universe. To look at another possible candidate for making long chain molecules, Silicon, it can do so, but only under very much more restrictive conditions. Carbon seems a better bet for increasing complexity.

So, yes entropy is increasing, but the interaction of the particles has to be taken into account too.

There's no proper value that can be called energy either, really? I think that to define energy either as some sort of mathematical
potential or detritus is not really getting towards any proper sort of definition.

Nah! Mathematical definition is a great way to define something. We can therefore actually test it. The problem is we tend to use the term in everyday life very loosely: 'I was a bit sluggish, but then a got a burst of energy.' Did you receive a holy sphere of white light...or do we mean that our actions quickened and we moved faster? (Oh, look Kinetic energy )

It doesn't help that energy, as a term, is used by woo-woo technicians to explain any old cobblers. Energy is a property of something. When a psychic is sitting on a seance and tells you 'I sense a dark "energy" nearby' really, what does that mean? I think they just mean they sense (or profess to sense) something somewhere.

--

As for 'beings of energy'. I think you mentioned it earlier. I think I know what you mean. The sort of non-corporal thing like a ghost, angel or the beings in Stargate SG-1 that Daniel became for after series 6. Lots of glittery light and usually very wise. Yes perhaps they are really a thing - we've still got so much to learn about the cosmos (and perhaps the multiverse, I hope!!), but they are not really beings of 'energy'. Like I said above, energy is a property of other things. Perhaps such a being is a complex form of space-time and not made of fermions, but utilises these structures to move, think and interact but is still constrained by the conservation of energy and the laws of thermodynamics.


Anyway, I'd argue that we are already 'beings of energy'. We convert it from one form to another to power ourselves and our struggles. It's just that we use a certain number of fermions in our bodies that act as a scaffold' to allow us to observe and interact with the universe.

Right, too late now.

Hope the above gives food for thought!

 

[Robert Zwilling]

It's just that we use a certain number of fermions in our bodies that act as a scaffold' to allow us to observe and interact with the universe.

I like that explanation. I would like to think that scaffolding is pretty extensive, possibly an internal road to far away places.

Not really. There have always been lots of trees?

There were 6 trillion trees at one point, geologically not too long ago. Now there are 3 trillion trees and we are running short 10 million trees a year in the sustainability program. I think we are very short on trees. The trees are in the zone we occupy which is not doing too well. There are other zones with life in them, some of them will survive very well because we need them but they don't need us. The Earth has been completely covered with ice, once, and has been covered by vast volcanic activity multiple times, not sure if having no ice on it is a bad situation but getting there too fast can't be helpful. Plus all the big meteorite and comet strikes are not helpful. For our zone things don't look too good but for other life zones they are just waiting to expand any time an opening opens up. There is always more life waiting in line, it just doesn't look like us.

I think this statement lacks rigour, and the logic is dubious.
Science and knowledge mostly advance in stages. Generally, there is an appreciation of where there are gaps or uncertainties in our knowledge. There are some surprises, but complete revolutions are uncommon.

When someone spots something interesting happening on a nearby planet I like to hear about it and if it can be connected however tenuously to life here or in other places I'm going to listen. When I was a kid, there were these things called quasars, then came black holes, which seemed to be rare but eventually they seemed to be everywhere. Then massive black holes were figured to be in the center of every galaxy. Quasars turned out to be super giant black holes hiding inside a big ball of visible energy. Black holes went from an oddity to a possible part of the formation of every galaxy. The closest one is 3,000 light years away, which is way too close for me. Prehistoric people went from being simple cave dwellers to sophisticated people living complex lives. We went from thinking the planet could take anything we could dump on it without missing a beat to realizing we can rival the enormity of the emissions of the natural world, interfere with them and even change their impact, and none of it to our advantage. But with all this information we don't really seem to be getting anywhere.

50 years ago people may not have known as much as we do now but they were able to get to Moon multiple times, build spacecraft that could be used multiple times, realized that the environment needed protection from people, and did it all without relying on super computers or everyone being connected by a handy dandy handheld computer. Perhaps the information is so plentiful, new and conflicting, even having opposing facts proven to be true, that any true revolutions have been snuffed out, only the shows being pushed by big money gets any notice. I often wonder what the world would have looked like if the computer industry hadn't been snuffed out by male chauvinism 180 years ago and instead had developed alongside the horse and the steam engine instead of rocket engines and plastic powered lifestyles.

 

[RJM Corbet]

I'm not sure how metaphysical you want to get here. A photon is a thing. It's a quanta of Electromagnetic radiation. An elemental particle. It's our current understanding on what we think light is (or X- and Gamma rays, infrared and radio etc.) And it has an energy - it is not energy. It's energy is related to the photon by its frequency.

Of course it's a thing that is really just our model of reality, so we expect it to do X,Y when we do A,B to it etc. So we can interact with these things and observe them. But then I could say the same about a macroscopic object like a tiger or a pansy, if a photon isn't a thing then neither are those.

What photons do tell us is that we are just not equipped to understand the deep underlying reality of our universe. They are both waves and particles. And when we look at other elementary particles, such as fermions, they too exhibit the same paradoxical position. We're just not equipped to understand the fundamental nature of the nano-universe.

Thanks for the response. That's the thing though, isn't it: the photon is the starting point for the whole of the rest of the system and it IS eventually a mathematical convenience? It works and it proves itself. But it may not be the only way of understanding reality? So to get back to the music analogy: call the photon 'middle C' and everything else inevitably falls into the unique pattern of seven full notes and five half notes, repeating octaves up and down – from radio waves to x-rays, the standard model, so to speak?

Also, of course, the note 'C' is a point (particle) that is also a wave?

But there are other music systems that sound weird to the western ear, as does western music to them.

What photons do tell us is that we are just not equipped to understand the deep underlying reality of our universe.

Refreshing candour from someone 'in the business'.

No I disagree. An neutral atom consists of a nucleus with a positive charge, say +N, which has bound to it N electrons. Both of these objects have mass and an electrostatic (well electromagnetic really, given that the electron is reasonably free to move about) interaction. It is the wave-like nature of the electron (the nucleons are wavelike too, however they are bound in a very small and tight area by the strong nuclear force) and this EM interaction, given that positive and negative charges attract between both, that give rise to the electron 'wanting' to be bound in very specific and discrete orbits. or quantum states, near the nucleus. Now due to observation, we further believe Pauli's exclusion principle holds - that no two electrons can co-exist in the same quantum state. So if another electron comes along, it is forced to go into another quantum state or orbit. Hence, from these humble beginnings we can see, at least I hope you can see, that is these set of forces and principles that make something 'solid'.

Of course the +ve/-ve (yin/yang) balance between proton and electron is in a way a result of the quantization of the photon and that quantization also results in the Pauli principle and the strong nuclear force and so on? It all falls into place. But eventually it remains a convenient notation system for reality that we are able to employ and that works pretty well. It is something we can read: like the music notation for a Beethoven symphony. Does that make sense?

I shouldn't force the analogy too far, but there are also going to be other music systems that use completely different notations -- and a different (alien) quantization of sound, which are just as valid. So effectively the development of quantum mechanics is really a 'northern' understanding that has in a way become the only game in town. There are the divisions between 'colleges', but the photon and the speed of light are central.

Hence, from these humble beginnings we can see, at least I hope you can see, that is these set of forces and principles that make something 'solid'.

Yes. That is elementary.

So, to give a specific example, when a Uranium 235 atom undergoes fission a lot can happen, but essentially the Uranium nucleus splits into two smaller daughter nuclei. It also emits somewhere between 2-4 neutrons...but including these, it can be seen that the mass of the resultant fission products is less than the original 235 nucleus. So some mass has gone...but gone into producing photons. Photons that have an energy that equates to the energy of the missing mass that the above relativistic equation demands. We can therefore use these energetic photons in further interactions to 'tap into nuclear energy'.

Interesting. So are these photons the light radiation of, say an atomic bomb blast, in the form of gamma rays, etc?

We should be clear on what we mean by entropy. It is a confusing topic, I admit. (I never really took to statistics )

In brief it is a property of a thermodynamic system. It is essentially related to the number of possible configurations of a system. I don't think the term 'anti-entropic' really makes sense from that perspective (can their be a system of things that cannot have any different configurations at all?). But, I think you are meaning something to do with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

So again let's be clear what that is: The entropy of an isolated system never decreases. (My italics.) Such isolated systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium - the state with maximum entropy.

Non-isolated systems can decrease entropy, provided that the other systems connected to this one increase their entropy by at least the same amount. So in the case of life, if it is decreasing entropy (I'll have to think about that, I'm not sure) it is doing so because it is relying on a big connected system that is increasing entropy (in our case the Sun...probably dramatically more.)

Note that as far as we know the universe is not connected to anything else, so it would seem that makes it isolated, therefore in the broadest and most general case, we think universal entropy must always be increasing. And therefore all the various sub-systems of the universe will be chained to this.

You, @Brian G Turner, @StilLearning and @hitmouse have helped educate me a bit here.

Maybe an extremely simple example. Take two fair die. Numbered 1 to 6. In the configuration space of rolling the two die and adding the result, rolling a 2 or a 12 are most unlikely. But rolling a 7 is most likely. It is so because of the property of adding two independent numbers and the type of dice we have.

We clearly have a similar situation, thermodynamic and entropy-wise, albeit it's much much more complex here in our universe!

Nice.

Nah! Mathematical definition is a great way to define something. We can therefore actually test it. The problem is we tend to use the term in everyday life very loosely: 'I was a bit sluggish, but then a got a burst of energy.' Did you receive a holy sphere of white light...or do we mean that our actions quickened and we moved faster? (Oh, look Kinetic energy )

It doesn't help that energy, as a term, is used by woo-woo technicians to explain any old cobblers. Energy is a property of something. When a psychic is sitting on a seance and tells you 'I sense a dark "energy" nearby' really, what does that mean? I think they just mean they sense (or profess to sense) something somewhere.

--

As for 'beings of energy'. I think you mentioned it earlier. I think I know what you mean. The sort of non-corporal thing like a ghost, angel or the beings in Stargate SG-1 that Daniel became for after series 6. Lots of glittery light and usually very wise. Yes perhaps they are really a thing - we've still got so much to learn about the cosmos (and perhaps the multiverse, I hope!!), but they are not really beings of 'energy'. Like I said above, energy is a property of other things. Perhaps such a being is a complex form of space-time and not made of fermions, but utilises these structures to move, think and interact but is still constrained by the conservation of energy and the laws of thermodynamics.


Anyway, I'd argue that we are already 'beings of energy'. We convert it from one form to another to power ourselves and our struggles. It's just that we use a certain number of fermions in our bodies that act as a scaffold' to allow us to observe and interact with the universe.

I don't think the mathematical definition of energy can claim ultimate authority on the subject. I think energy is going to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, that isn't always woo.

Hope the above gives food for thought!

Indeed, indeed, indeed -- as always VB. Thanks again.

 

[Vertigo]

I shouldn't force the analogy too far, but there are also going to be other music systems that use completely different notations -- and a different (alien) quantization of sound, which are just as valid. So effectively the development of quantum mechanics is really a 'northern' understanding that has in a way become the only game in town. There are the divisions between 'colleges', but the photon and the speed of light are central.

I think you are taking this analogy too far. Music is a subjective, qualitative thing, science is the opposite; it is objective and quantitative (as far as possible). With music 'systems' there is no right and wrong some like one some like the other. In science there should only really be three 'states'; right, wrong, don't yet know. So just because there are 'other music systems' does not mean there are other physics systems.

I don't think the mathematical definition of energy can claim ultimate authority on the subject. I think energy is going to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, that isn't always woo.

We are taking science here where there is only one correct definition of energy. Other philosophies might use the word for other things but that doesn't mean that science should. Energy is very well defined in science. I'm afraid if this discussion is going to go down the more spiritual side of things then I'll just drop out.

And thank you @Venusian Broon for your, as ever, illuminating science post!

 

[RJM Corbet]

We are taking science here where there is only one correct definition of energy. Other philosophies might use the word for other things but that doesn't mean that science should. Energy is very well defined in science.

Did I say science should change its definition? I said science goes as far into describing the mechanism of nature as what science can do, based on the quantization of the photon, etc. It does a wonderful job. But do you not even accept the possibility that 'energy' may be more than that?

What photons do tell us is that we are just not equipped to understand the deep underlying reality of our universe.

 

[Brian G Turner]

So to get back to the music analogy

You may find this book interesting: Introducing Quantum Theory: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...) eBook: J.P. McEvoy, Oscar Zarate: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Aside from being a simple introduction to quantum theory, you reminded me that it includes how thinking about music theory was considered in its development.