Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => Science and Technology => Topic started by: Sriram on March 13, 2016, 06:43:59 AM
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Hi everyone,
Here is a video about Neil Tyson's views on whether life can exist as pure energy.
http://futurism.com/neil-de-grasse-tyson-on-whether-life-could-exist-as-pure-energy-video/
He seems to feel that it can exist though it will be amorphous.
Well...if we can accept matter that cannot be sensed at all through any of the five senses (Dark Matter)....and energy that cannot be sensed either but which pushes entire galaxies apart (Dark Energy)...... why not life that is amorphous?
Cheers.
Sriram
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Life is information patterns essentially, but information needs a medium to be enscribed on; the life we are familiar with is encoded on recycled carbon and there's probably no reason in principle why other mediums could not be used; but there must be some medium, you cannot encode information on nothing.
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As the quote from Mark Eichenlaub on the page points out: energy isn't stuff - you can't make things out of pure energy any more than you can make things out of pure momentum.
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As the quote from Mark Eichenlaub on the page points out: energy isn't stuff - you can't make things out of pure energy any more than you can make things out of pure momentum.
Surely both momentum and energy are produced by 'stuff'.
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Surely both momentum and energy are produced by 'stuff'.
Both energy and momentum are attributes of stuff. You can't have just momentum or "pure momentum", you can only have something that has momentum. Similarly, you can't have just energy, just something that has energy.
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I like the quote by Audrey Hepburn
"Nothing is impossible, the word itself says " I'm possible""
I'm open minded on it ;)
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I like the quote by Audrey Hepburn
"Nothing is impossible, the word itself says " I'm possible""
I'm open minded on it ;)
While I agree that there are few things that can be declared impossible, there are some. You can't make 2 + 2 = 38.4 because of the way the numbers and the concepts of addition and equality are defined. This is like that. The way in which science defines the term energy, means that it can't exist by itself.
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While I agree that there are few things that can be declared impossible, there are some. You can't make 2 + 2 = 38.4 because of the way the numbers and the concepts of addition and equality are defined. This is like that. The way in which science defines the term energy, means that it can't exist by itself.
It probably is impossible. :D
But they used to think life couldn't exist without oxygen, until they discovered volcanic vents that supported life without the things they considered vital.
Before the Big Bang, wouldn't there have been some form of energy in existence to have created the Big Bang in the first place?
Someone said, can't remember who, that energy couldn't be destroyed.
According to this it can't be created or destroyed
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/energy-can-neither-be-created-nor-destroyed/
We have another poster who comes in, now and again who seems to believe this energy is God.
Nicholas :)
;D
I have no idea if an energy life form is possible.
Not as far as we know, I guess :D
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Both energy and momentum are attributes of stuff. You can't have just momentum or "pure momentum", you can only have something that has momentum. Similarly, you can't have just energy, just something that has energy.
Quite! Momentum is stuff at rest or in motion, and energy is needed to alter either state.
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As the quote from Mark Eichenlaub on the page points out: energy isn't stuff - you can't make things out of pure energy any more than you can make things out of pure momentum.
But E=MC squared. Energy can be derived from matter and vice versa. So....energy can exist by itself and not just as an attribute of matter.
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It probably is impossible. :D
But they used to think life couldn't exist without oxygen...
Saying that there might be life (or anything else) made of pure energy is like saying we might find a circle with a corner - it just doesn't make sense.
Would you suggest life made of pure temperature, or velocity? Pure energy is just as nonsensical.
I'm not making any statement about what life might be made of - we may find life that isn't made of matter and that has energy - I don't know - but whatever it is made of will not be called "energy" because the word already has a meaning.
I can confidently predict we won't find life made of irony for exactly the same reason that we won't find it made of energy.
As for energy not being created or destroyed - that is because energy is a number we can calculate that is conserved because the laws of nature don't change over time. In the same way, momentum is a number we can calculate that is conserved because the laws of nature don't change from place to place. See Noether’s Theorem:-
http://tinyurl.com/m9g36
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But E=MC squared. Energy can be derived from matter and vice versa. So....energy can exist by itself and not just as an attribute of matter.
The M doesn't stand for matter, it stands for mass. Mass can't exist by itself, either.
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Life is information patterns essentially, but information needs a medium to be enscribed on; the life we are familiar with is encoded on recycled carbon and there's probably no reason in principle why other mediums could not be used; but there must be some medium, you cannot encode information on nothing.
You are just describing one form of life that you are familiar with. That need not be the norm in all conditions and states.
Nobody had thought of Parallel Universes existing within inches of us. Now they do. Nobody had thought of matter that couldn't be sensed at all. Now we do.
Thinking laterally is the norm now and even Tyson who is usually fairly conservative seems to have thought out of the box.
Life existing in some amorphous form is certainly possible.
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The M doesn't stand for matter, it stands for mass. Mass can't exist by itself, either.
Yes....mass requires matter and its matter that gets converted to energy. Matter and Energy are interchangeable.
Light exists by itself and travels through the universe. Its not just an attribute of something. Its energy that's released in certain processes. Gamma Rays are energy, X-rays are energy. All EM radiation is energy. Maybe Gravity is too.
And Dark Energy is probably just energy.
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Yes....mass requires matter and its matter that gets converted to energy. Matter and Energy are interchangeable.
No, they are not. Mass (an attribute of particles) can convert to energy (another attribute of particles).
Light exists by itself and travels through the universe. Its not just an attribute of something. Its energy that's released in certain processes. Gamma Rays are energy, X-rays are energy. All EM radiation is energy. Maybe Gravity s too.
Light, X-rays and gamma rays are not energy - they are electromagnetic radiation that has energy (photons that have energy).
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No, they are not. Mass (an attribute of particles) can convert to energy (another attribute of particles).
Light, X-rays and gamma rays are not energy - they are electromagnetic radiation that has energy (photons that have energy).
Matter IS ultimately Particles. And Particles are Energy.
Photons are just packets of energy. Its Quanta. They can be perceived both as particles and as waves. Its not some form of matter with some energy contained inside.
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I was reading this article
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/why-life-does-not-really-exist/
Interestingly there is enough difficultly defining "life" let alone what form it could take.
🌹
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Matter IS ultimately Particles. And Particles are Energy.
Photons are just packets of energy. Its Quanta. They can be perceived both as particles and as waves. Its not some form of matter with some energy contained inside.
Drivel. Photons have energy, they also have spin (for example).
Even at school level, energy is defined as "the ability to do work" and you can't make things out of an ability.
Particles are not the ability to do work - they are not energy. Waves are not energy either - neither are quantum fields which is the best theory of matter we have.
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Drivel. Photons have energy, they also have spin (for example).
Even at school level, energy is defined as "the ability to do work" and you can't make things out of an ability.
Particles are not the ability to do work - they are not energy. Waves are not energy either - neither are quantum fields which is the best theory of matter we have.
Ok.... SKS. I don't want to argue this further. Matter and energy are interchangeable. Elementary Particles such as electrons can behave both as particles and as waves. EM radiations are energy.
You are still at the Simple Machines stage I see. Thanks & Cheers.
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I was reading this article
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/why-life-does-not-really-exist/
Interestingly there is enough difficultly defining "life" let alone what form it could take.
🌹
It is indeed very difficult to define life - but it can't be made out of irony, temperature, the colour blue or energy - 'cos they aren't things.
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OK Sriram , I guess if you want to remain in that state of scientific illiteracy, that's up to you.
However, those who are interested in science should note that
Matter and energy are interchangeable.
is drivel; Mass and energy are equivalent.
Elementary Particles such as electrons can behave both as particles and as waves.
is true, but
EM radiations are energy.
is drivel - they have energy.
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You are still at the Simple Machines stage I see. Thanks & Cheers.
Do let me know when you progress to that stage and perhaps we can continue to the more advanced stuff....
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It is indeed very difficult to define life - but it can't be made out of irony, temperature, the colour blue or energy - 'cos they aren't things.
I was thinking more along the lines of elementals such as portrayed in games and other things ( including some beliefs ).
You sort of have Fire elementals with the ideas of Jinns.
That's sort of legend of a being made up of energy.
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I was thinking more along the lines of elementals such as portrayed in games and other things ( including some beliefs ).
You sort of have Fire elementals with the ideas of Jinns.
That's sort of legend of a being made up of energy.
Well, fire isn't energy either. I'm not actually making any statement at all about what sort of beings might exist - just that the scientific meaning of the word energy rules out things being made of it.
Perhaps there are things like Fire Elementals and Jinns out there (I don't know) but they won't be made of energy (or temperature or electric charge or acceleration or poetry or sarcasm....).
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For anybody interested, here is an article on the whole matter / energy misconception.
Matter and Energy: A False Dichotomy
http://tinyurl.com/lnc3oz3
"But for the moment, suffice it to say that energy is not itself an object. An atom is an object; energy is not. Energy is something which objects can have, and groups of objects can have — a property of objects that characterizes their behavior and their relationships to one another."
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You are just describing one form of life that you are familiar with. That need not be the norm in all conditions and states.
Nobody had thought of Parallel Universes existing within inches of us. Now they do. Nobody had thought of matter that couldn't be sensed at all. Now we do.
Thinking laterally is the norm now and even Tyson who is usually fairly conservative seems to have thought out of the box.
Life existing in some amorphous form is certainly possible.
I think you'd need to justify that last statement.
Information needs an encoding medium. You can encode your broadband signal on top of a domestic alternating current supply, but you cannot encode it on nothing. Schoolboy arithmetic says that anything times zero will always be zero; and that is a logic principle, and will just be just as true in the heart of the Sun or in a parallel universe or in a cloud of 'dark matter'.
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I think you'd need to justify that last statement.
Information needs an encoding medium. You can encode your broadband signal on top of a domestic alternating current supply, but you cannot encode it on nothing. Schoolboy arithmetic says that anything times zero will always be zero; and that is a logic principle, and will just be just as true in the heart of the Sun or in a parallel universe or in a cloud of 'dark matter'.
You and many science enthusiasts see life as the result of certain processes. You are defining life in a particular way based on a specific process and mechanism....and then expecting to see the same process as the basis of all life everywhere. This need not be true.
Life could be much more elemental than that. Life could in fact exist everywhere in an amorphous state which takes form using material processes. Its the manifestation of this Life in a material form that requires a process.....not the existence of life itself.
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You and many science enthusiasts see life as the result of certain processes.
Well, yes, that is what we have observed.
You are defining life in a particular way based on a specific process and mechanism....and then expecting to see the same process as the basis of all life everywhere. This need not be true.
As has been pointed out, defining life is not easy and it is indeed possible that we might find something that we want to define as life, that is based on something other than complex carbon chemistry (which is the only example we have).
Life could be much more elemental than that. Life could in fact exist everywhere in an amorphous state which takes form using material processes.
Now you seem to have drifted off into the realm of baseless speculation. Yes, I guess it could, but how would that relate to the complex carbon chemistry that is the only example we have? More to the point, what reasoning or evidence (if any) lies behind this speculation? Is it any more than a bizarre guess?
Its the manifestation of this Life in a material form that requires a process.....not the existence of life itself.
Moving from baseless speculation to baseless assertion...
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You and many science enthusiasts see life as the result of certain processes. You are defining life in a particular way based on a specific process and mechanism....and then expecting to see the same process as the basis of all life everywhere. This need not be true.
Life could be much more elemental than that. Life could in fact exist everywhere in an amorphous state which takes form using material processes. Its the manifestation of this Life in a material form that requires a process.....not the existence of life itself.
That isn't a justification of your position, its merely a restatement of it. I don't see that information can be present or stored in a vacuum; it is a logic problem. You're claiming in effect that although 0 x 27 = 0 as far as we know, 0 x 27 might actually give some other result in some 'other' reality. That's not valid reasoning; 'thinking outside the box' does not equate to abandoning all reason.
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That isn't a justification of your position, its merely a restatement of it. I don't see that information can be present or stored in a vacuum; it is a logic problem. You're claiming in effect that although 0 x 27 = 0 as far as we know, 0 x 27 might actually give some other result in some 'other' reality. That's not valid reasoning; 'thinking outside the box' does not equate to abandoning all reason.
Well....it does... if...our assumptions, old theories and extrapolations of these ideas restrict our world view. The world is not going to restrict itself to our logic. We have to look for explanations (however weird) to fit reality.
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We have to look for explanations (however weird) to fit reality.
What part of reality do you imagine requires your bizarre speculations...?
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Well....it does... if...our assumptions, old theories and extrapolations of these ideas restrict our world view. The world is not going to restrict itself to our logic. We have to look for explanations (however weird) to fit reality.
An explanation that is meaningless would not be an explanation of anything though.
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But E=MC squared. Energy can be derived from matter and vice versa. So....energy can exist by itself and not just as an attribute of matter.
Energy isn't a thing. It's just a number that is calculated according to certain rules. It's like a universal rate of exchange for certain quantities.
E=mc2 doesn't tell you that mass can be converted to energy
, it only tells you when mass is converted to (say) photons, how many there will be and what sort.
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Or work = force x distance.
I need an incredible amount of force to drag me away from here to do the distance and some work ;) ( in this case ironing) ::)
I really haven't got the energy ;D
That's my excuse........ :-[
Energy ( work)
Work ( ironing) = force ( a boot up the bum) x distance ( to the ironing board)
As I'm at rest, no work is being done, so no energy :-[
::)
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Energy isn't a thing. It's just a number that is calculated according to certain rules. It's like a universal rate of exchange for certain quantities.
? ? ? ? ? ? ::)
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? ? ? ? ? ? ::)
You really need to read this:-
Matter and Energy: A False Dichotomy
http://tinyurl.com/lnc3oz3
- Matter and Energy really aren’t in the same class and shouldn’t be paired in one’s mind.
- Matter, in fact, is an ambiguous term; there are several different definitions used in both scientific literature and in public discourse. Each definition selects a certain subset of the particles of nature, for different reasons. Consumer beware! Matter is always some kind of stuff, but which stuff depends on context.
- Energy is not ambiguous (not within physics, anyway). But energy is not itself stuff; it is something that all stuff has.
- The term Dark Energy confuses the issue, since it isn’t (just) energy after all. It also really isn’t stuff; certain kinds of stuff can be responsible for its presence, though we don’t know the details.
- Photons should not be called `energy’, or `pure energy’, or anything similar. All particles are ripples in fields and have energy; photons are not special in this regard. Photons are stuff; energy is not.
- The stuff of the universe is all made from fields (the basic ingredients of the universe) and their particles. At least this is the post-1973 viewpoint.
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? ? ? ? ? ? ::)
Objects have properties. For instance, a book has various properties. It has mass and velocity and height above the floor (let's say it is sitting on a table 1 metre above the ground). It's mass is 1kg and because it is not moving, its velocity is 0.
There's a number we can calculate called potential energy, which in the Earth's gravitational field can be calculated as
PE = mgh
where m is the mass (1kg), g is the acceleration due to gravity (10 m/s/s) and h is the height (1m). PE is just a number (10 joules, in fact) that results from the two attributes of the book and the gravity. There is no stuff.
There's another number called kinetic energy which is calculated as
KE = (1/2)mv2
where m is the mass of the object and v is its velocity. There is not stuff. The kinetic energy of the book is zero because it is at rest on the table.
There is a law called the Conservation of Energy that says if we add up all these energies, we always come to the same number. So the total energy of the book (in Newtonian terms) is
TE = KE + PE = 0 + 10 joules.
If I push the book off the table the PE starts decreasing because the height of the book is getting less and less. The KE is increasing because the book is getting faster and faster. However, the conservation of energy tells us that TE is always 10. Just before the book hits the ground, the PE is pretty much zero since the height is zero. The KE must therefore be 10 which tells us that the velocity must be the square root of 20.
No actual stuff has been converted from one form to another. All that has happened is the height of the book has got less and the speed of it has increased.
After the book has hit the floor, its PE is zero because its height is zero and its KE is zero because it is not moving. However, the impact causes the atoms of the air, book and floor to move about more. This we know because we hear the impact and also, with a good enough thermometer, we can measure that the book, air and floor are all slightly warmer. There are ways of calculating the energy of heat and sound and we find that, if we do, we get the number 10 again. Still, no stuff has been converted from one form to another, all that has happened is that the book's impact with the floor has caused molecules to jiggle about more vigorously.
Energy is just a number.
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? ? ? ? ? ::)
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? ? ? ? ? ::)
What are you having difficulty with? The maths or a grasp of reality?
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What are you having difficulty with? The maths or a grasp of reality?
Have you read the OP and Tyson's views? What has your 'learned' discourse about potential energy and kinetic energy got to do with it?
Are you denying that EM radiation is energy or that electrons behave both as particles and as waves?
What exactly is your point in relation to the OP?
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Have you read the OP and Tyson's views?
Did you know NdGT is frequently wrong about things?
What has your 'learned' discourse about potential energy and kinetic energy got to do with it?
It's an example to demonstrate to you that energy is not a thing. You can't have pure energy.
Are you denying that EM radiation is energy
Yes. EM radiation is made of photons. There is a certain number associated with a photon which is called its energy, but it is just a number.
or that electrons behave both as particles and as waves?
Electrons are quantum objects that behave in some respects like particles and other respects like waves. There is a number associated with an electron which is called its energy, but it is just a number.
What exactly is your point in relation to the OP?
The idea of pure energy is nonsense.
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LOL! Thanks jeremyp. Your idea of energy being only a number and not a real thing is 'unique'...at least to me.
I am surprised (shocked) that all the science enthusiasts on here are willing to go along with that and no one is contesting it. Shows how much a kinship in belief system can foster togetherness.
Thanks again. I have nothing more to say. :D
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LOL! Thanks jeremyp. Your idea of energy being only a number and not a real thing is 'unique'...at least to me.
It is a real thing, but not in the abstract - it's a property of something. As Jeremy said the idea of pure energy divorced from something possessing that energy is nonsense. If you don't get it now you never will.
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Yeah Right!!! ::)
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Demonstrate otherwise and pick up your Nobel Prize, or take your scientific illiteracy elsewhere.
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Your idea of energy being only a number and not a real thing is 'unique'...at least to me.
I suggest getting an education .
I am surprised (shocked) that all the science enthusiasts on here are willing to go along with that and no one is contesting it. Shows how much a kinship in belief system can foster togetherness.
It has nothing to do with kinship - it's just how science defines the term "energy". It is not the sort of thing that can be contested - it's a definition. Contesting it would be like trying to contest that density is mass per unit volume.
Go look it up...
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Hi everyone,
1. Energy cannot be just an attribute of something. It is a real thing that forms an integral part of all matter.
2. Energy does get transformed into different forms to suit the requirement....but still can be measured.
3. All energy on earth has probably come from the sun in the form of light and heat. It then got transformed into different types and activated all things. That's an amazing feature of the world btw.
4. Energy is not just kinetic or potential energy....meant to do work. That is how it was first understood in the 19th century while studying simple machines and inventing new complex machines. Energy in the form of heat (thermal energy) was thereby understood.
5. Light and other EM radiation were understood subsequently as energy. Then nuclear energy was understood.
6. Light is energy. A photon is a mass less packet of energy. It is a quantum of radiation. A photon is not matter...it is energy. There is no distinction between a photon and its energy. Its just the name given to describe the particle behavior of light under certain circumstances as in photo electric effect.
7. Light is probably the nearest to 'pure energy' because there is no 'matter' 'carrying' that energy.
8. 'Life' as pure energy is of course speculative and is a philosophical point.....but no more so than many other 'scientific' postulates of recent years. People normally speak of God and other spiritual beings as 'light'...btw.
Cheers.
Sriram
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1. Energy cannot be just an attribute of something. It is a real thing that forms an integral part of all matter.
Assertion.
2. Energy does get transformed into different forms to suit the requirement....but still can be measured.
Suit what requirement? Generally, it can be calculated from measurements.
3. All energy on earth has probably come from the sun in the form of light and heat. It then got transformed into different types and activated all things. That's an amazing feature of the world btw.
Half understood waffle.
5. Light and other EM radiation were understood subsequently as energy. Then nuclear energy was understood.
EM radiation is not energy - it has energy.
6. Light is energy. A photon is a mass less packet of energy. It is a quantum of radiation. A photon is not matter...it is energy. There is no distinction between a photon and its energy. Its just the name given to describe the particle behavior of light under certain circumstances as in photo electric effect.
Nobody said a photon was matter (which is an ambiguous term anyway) - neither is it energy.
The idea that "everything is matter or energy" is a misunderstanding.
7. Light is probably the nearest to 'pure energy' because there is no 'matter' 'carrying' that energy.
It's only the "nearest to", now? It the light dawning in your mind?
8. 'Life' as pure energy is of course speculative and is a philosophical point.....but no more so than many other 'scientific' postulates of recent years. People normally speak of God and other spiritual beings as 'light'...btw.
Life can't be energy 'cos energy isn't stuff.
For goodness sake read this:-
Matter and Energy: A False Dichotomy
http://tinyurl.com/lnc3oz3
And this:-
Noether’s Theorem:-
http://tinyurl.com/m9g36
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Never mind about Life energy. A discussion on that is too much to expect from here. I just mentioned it because Tyson commented on it.
What is light if not matter or energy?
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Never mind about Life energy. A discussion on that is too much to expect from here. I just mentioned it because Tyson commented on it.
What is light if not matter or energy?
If you'd just follow the links, you'd learn a lot.
What is meant by "pure energy"? This is almost always used in reference to photons, commonly in the context of an electron and a positron (or some other massive particle and anti-particle) annihilating to make two photons (recall the antiparticle of a photon is also a photon.) But it’s a terrible thing to do. Energy is something that photons have; it is not what photons are. [I have height and weight; that does not mean I am height and weight.]
The term "pure energy" is a mix of poetry, shorthand and garbage. Since photons have no mass, they have no mass-energy, and that means their energy is "purely motion-energy". But that does not mean the same thing, either in physics or intuitively to the non-expert, as saying photons are "pure energy". Photons are particles just as electrons are particles; they both are ripples in a corresponding field, and they both have energy. The electron and positron that annihilated had energy too — the same amount of energy as the photons to which they annihilate, in fact, since energy is conserved (i.e. the total amount does not change during the annihilation process.)
http://tinyurl.com/lnc3oz3 [original emphasis]
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Hi everyone,
1. Energy cannot be just an attribute of something. It is a real thing that forms an integral part of all matter.
How do you explain how an object gains energy just by being lifted up then?
2. Energy does get transformed into different forms to suit the requirement....but still can be measured.
How do you measure energy?
4. Energy is not just kinetic or potential energy....meant to do work.
Nobody claimed it is.
That is how it was first understood in the 19th century while studying simple machines and inventing new complex machines. Energy in the form of heat (thermal energy) was thereby understood.
Bad example: heat is just kinetic energy of molecules.
5. Light and other EM radiation were understood subsequently as energy.
EM radiation is not energy, it is photons.
Then nuclear energy was understood.
Not by you apparently.
6. Light is energy. A photon is a mass less packet of energy. It is a quantum of radiation. A photon is not matter...it is energy.
Photons are quantum particles like electrons and protons. It happens to be massless, but it has energy as an attribute, just like all the others.
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Again....according to you...if Light is neither matter nor energy....what is it?!
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Again....according to you...if Light is neither matter nor energy....what is it?!
Why won't you read the articles I linked to? What are you afraid of?
I actually went out of my way to find Matter and Energy: A False Dichotomy http://tinyurl.com/lnc3oz3 just for this thread and those who might be interested in the relatively common misconception that everything must be matter or energy. I looked for an article because it's quite complicated and I thought somebody had probably written about it.
Perhaps, you aren't really interested in the answer?
Anyway - to answer your question succinctly: light (both photons and the wave properties) is an excitation of a quantum field. So is an electron, so is a proton. So is every wave and particle in the universe (as far as we know at present).
The term matter is not well defined in physics and can refer to several different subsets of particles.
The term energy is well defined and has been explained at length already.
[Edited for typos]
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Why won't you read the articles I linked to? What are you afraid of?
I actually went out of my way to find Matter and Energy: A False Dichotomy http://tinyurl.com/lnc3oz3 just for this thread and those who might be interested in the relatively common misconception that everything must be matter or energy. I looked for an article because it's quite complicated and I thought somebody had probably written about it.
Perhaps, you aren't really interested in the answer?
Anyway - to answer your question succinctly: light (both photons and the wave properties) is an excitation of a quantum field. So is an electron, so is a proton. So is every wave and particle in the universe (as far as we know at present).
The term matter is not well defined in physics and can refer to several different subsets of particles.
The term energy is well defined and has been explained at length already.
[Edited for typos]
If photons and electrons and protons are all merely excitation's of quantum fields then they are all basically the same as far as we are concerned. Which translates to the energy - matter equivalence. Anything can therefore behave as either matter (particle) or as energy (wave). We know this. No problem so far.
But you argued that energy is not a real thing and just an attribute of matter. Now you are saying we don't know what matter is but we understand energy well. Make up your mind.
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If photons and electrons and protons are all merely excitation's of quantum fields then they are all basically the same as far as we are concerned.
Yes.
Which translates to the energy - matter equivalence. Anything can therefore behave as either matter (particle) or as energy (wave). We know this. No problem so far.
It translates to nothing of the kind - unless you are translating to your very own language that re-defines the scientific terms so that they mean something completely different to you than to everybody else.
But you argued that energy is not a real thing and just an attribute of matter.
Not matter - unless I slipped up. I think I used either stuff or things. I did that to avoid using the term excitation of a quantum field because it isn't really necessary to go that far to understand on a simpler level - except by you, it seems.
Now you are saying we don't know what matter is but we understand energy well. Make up your mind.
I've not changed my mind.
Why are you afraid of reading the article? It explains all this well.
I even quoted the bit that says energy is well defined but matter isn't back in #35. Seems you are too afraid or too lazy to read it, even if it's quoted and right in front of you.
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Again....according to you...if Light is neither matter nor energy....what is it?!
Light is photons.
Photons are fundamental particles with a charge of zero and a mass of zero. They belong to the class of particles known as bosons which means (in very rough terms) they don't bump into each other.
Are photons matter? Well, I think that depends on your definition of matter. If matter is "everything that is not energy", then, yes they are matter, but so is everything else. If you define matter as "everything that has mass" (as I think you suggest), then they are not matter, but if you use that definition, the idea that everything is either matter or energy is a false dichotomy.
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Well...I have seen the article of 2012 by Matt Strassler. You people have almost quoted him verbatim. All that sounds very clever and all that but...there are many other articles (more up to date) about matter and energy and their equivalence which you have ignored.
I can understand that matter and energy could be further analysed and we might come up with quantum fields.....or Strings or whatever as the basis for them. That's fine. I have no problem with that.
We have to discuss everything at the level at which it is relevant. If we are talking of two humans meeting we can't talk of their atomic constituents. Reductionism can become absurd.
It becomes an irrelevance while discussing matter and energy at the level of their equivalence and the fact that Light is energy. That remains true...at that level.
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Well...I have seen the article of 2012 by Matt Strassler. You people have almost quoted him verbatim. All that sounds very clever and all that but...there are many other articles (more up to date) about matter and energy and their equivalence which you have ignored.
...for example....?
I can understand that matter and energy could be further analysed and we might come up with quantum fields.....or Strings or whatever as the basis for them. That's fine. I have no problem with that.
Quantum field theory is standard physics now and has been for some time...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_quantum_field_theory
WTF - you obviously don't care about finding out what science has to say on the subject.
What I don't get is why. Does some supposed justification of your blind faith beliefs rely on this matter-energy misunderstanding somehow...?
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...for example....?
Quantum field theory is standard physics now and has been for some time...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_quantum_field_theory
WTF - you obviously don't care about finding out what science has to say on the subject.
What I don't get is why. Does some supposed justification of your blind faith beliefs rely on this matter-energy misunderstanding somehow...?
Ha Ha....I have no problem with quantum fields or whatever. I started this thread because I came across Tyson's comment about pure energy....and he is a well known scientist.
You and some others have had a problem with that.
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....and he is a well known scientist.
He is not infallible.
You and some others have had a problem with that.
The only problem is that he was wrong. He made a mistake, which is perfectly understandable in a live phone-in like that; or perhaps he deliberately glossed over the point to avoid getting too technical or telling the questioner they didn't understand basic physics. I don't know.
What I do know, from my own formal education, from several textbooks and from other sources, is that he was technically incorrect.
There is even a quote (from Mark Eichenlaub) on the page in the OP that makes the same point.
This didn't start out as a disagreement - I was just trying point out a fairly common misunderstanding about matter and energy.
You could find out for yourself, if you do some research and concentrate on textbooks and education sites (avoiding pop science and press).
It's up to you - cling to your misunderstanding or get better informed....