i was just wondering, is matter created or destroyed or does it simply change forms?
In almost all circumstances, matter is not created nor destroyed. The only time matter is destroyed is in a nuclear fission reaction.
Mass may be converted to energy, or vise versa, but mass-energy (E=mc^2) is conserved.
Nuh uh. Matter is converted to energy even in chemical reactions. It is just too negligable to mat… uh, notice.
But fission is a very common process in the universe, so I’m not sure what you mean by your first sentence. Matter is converted into energy in the sun and every star like it.
Not intended as a hijack, but what about the other end of the equation?
I mean, ok, so you can turn matter into energy, and it happens in nature all the time… fission reactions and the like.
So where in nature does ENERGY turn into MATTER?
Fission doesn’t count… that’s turning matter into another type of matter, and releasing energy that was part of some of the matter.
Does it work the other way? Ever? Or is this part of that whole entropy business?
Well, almost any time you have energy stored, you can find it as matter. For instance, a molecule of methane is slightly heavier than the separate molecules of carbon and hydrogen (there’s energy stored in the methane bonds).
But maybe the better way to look at it, which is pretty much the modern physics view, is that matter and energy are really just different aspects of the same thing, and how much of each aspect you see depends on your point of view.
The reaction occuring in the sun and other stars is, of course, fusion not fission.
But, there are naturally occurring fission reactions:
Um, no one disputed that. In other news, one plus one does equal two.
Hey, I didn’t think it was terribly clear, so I added a cite. Beat me with a stick, why dontcha.
Yes, my bad. My cite even said fusion!
Do quantum fluctuations violate the conservation law?
It is fairly common for a high-energy photon to spontaneously change into a pair of particles, such as an electron and a positron. In these reactions, it’s always one particle and one antiparticle created. if the two partcles meet up again, they’ll turn back into a high-energy photon.
Of course, you can only see these sorts of things in particle detectors, so most people aren’t aware they’re going on all the time.
Also, in degenerate stars, fusion can be driven to fuse nuclei of iron or above in atomic number. Fusion among these nuclei doesn’t create energy, it uses it up. So, all the heavier elements we see around us are partially made up of energy that was condensed to make matter.
Oh No!!
Not another Hawking radiation/Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle thread!?
:smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack:
In short, no. The net amount of mass-energy remains the same, as all of the fluctuations average out to precisely zero. It does, however, prevent any system from getting down to Absolute Zero (0 K).
Doing a Google search on this info is somewhat difficult because it seems all of the kooks have jumped on this topic as part of their `free energy’ delusions. Wikipedia has some good articles on these topics: