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Originally Posted by Strygaldwir  Neither matter nor energy can be created (by humans, given our current understandings of physical and the properties of our universe) only transformed. E = MC*C theorizes that there is a direct correlation between energy and matter and that C*C (Speed of light squared) suggest that there is an AWFUL lot of energy in matter. Thats at the nuclear level of interaction. At the chemical level, energy can be store and released by creating and releasing certain bonds. Since we know we can't create any energy, or matter, we can only transform it, we know that the energy released during a chemical reaction had to been put there previously. Now, we may not have put it there. So, that gives us some opportunities.
Hydrogen, can be burned in the presence of Oxygen and you'll get two things one, a chemical energy release and 2) a combining of 2 atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, that H20 stuff colloquially known as water. We could even take the water, transform it into hydrogen, dissassociate the oxygen and burn it. Only challenge is we'd have us the same energy we released to break them apart. Now, there are an untold number of ways to create these chemical reactions, but they all have to honor the "we can't create energy or matter theory. There are these really cool devices that take water, solar energy carbon dioxide, strip the hydrogen out of the water, combining it with the carbon dioxide and release the 2 oxygen atoms and makes a substance we can burn, releasing that stored solar energy! Really cool stuff, very ecologically friendly too!
I am sure that we understand, we live in a semi closed system, earth. .. |
E=mc^2 refers to the
rest mass of a particle. That is, the energy required to create that complete particle from vacuum. It may suprise folks to learn that this happens all the time. When you clap your hands, for instance, the kinetic energy of the particles that make up your claping hand gets transfered to the vacuum and 'creates' a few light particles. Most of the time, the particles vanish quickly in a blip of light. This is a smaller scale version of what happens in a particle collider. So I'd have to correct you that matter CAN in fact, be created. Energy cannot (well... not
exactly).
I'd also correct you that the Earth is not properly a semi-closed system. The Earth + the Sun is.