What on earth is energy?

Quoting Benj96

Can one define that which defines everything?

Yes. It's Information. My unconventional personal worldview is a Theory of Everything. And it's based on the quantum equivalence of Energy and Matter and Mind. From that equation, all of your questions can be answered. :smile:

Information : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html

EnFormAction : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

This crops up in the Wiki article Talk section:

"Non random probabilistic flow of information in the Planckian order of magnitude"

Whereas, in the article: "In physics, energy is the quantitative property that must be transferred to an object in order to perform work on, or to heat, the object"

Not sure a random physicist could do much better than this.

Reply to Gnomon I found your links really interesting thank you

Let's, at least, start with the photons of the electro-magnetic spectrum. You find energy there, for sure.
Photons, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon
The Electro-magnetic spectrum, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum
Let's also have in mind how the Black Holes consume photons and all else, that is, the nature of photon consuming black holes. Black holes, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole

What I’ve always found interesting is when my high school textbooks always described light energy as having both particle and wave characteristics without ever explaining the reason for that. My idea is that different quantities of energy waves will naturally form different Geometrical shapes by interacting with each other. I refer to the relationship between atoms in the formation of molecules. Three atoms with similar interaction will form a triangle, but four make a tetrahedron. Energy waves might be able to do something similar and it just so happens light forms a structure with the characteristics of particles.

Energy is whatever it is that makes something do something. That’s even in its etymology.

To say that matter is made of energy is more or less to say that things are what they do. The existence of a thing consists of its capacity for action.

“To be is to do” and “to do is to be.”

(Also, to be is to be perceived, and to do is to be perceived, so to perceive is to be done-unto. Experience is just the flip side of interaction).

All particles are moving to some extent in what we call heat, so it wouldn’t be too out there to say that all matter is what matter does. We use it in every day language too: “He is running.”

Quoting Braindead

26

What I’ve always found interesting is when my high school textbooks always described light energy as having both particle and wave characteristics without ever explaining the reason for that.

Photons and other fundamental particles including the electron and proton, exhibit behaviour that sometimes can best be described by waves eg diffraction, and sometimes as particles. eg the photoelectric effect. These characteristics are both seen in the famous 2-slit experiment, the results of which still confound scientists and philosophers. Perhaps the best overall model is that of a quantum wave.

Quoting Benj96

How does energy become matter and then manipulate itself?

If energy is an expression of mind that is an easy one; Is it more correct to say mind manipulates energy and therefore matter?

How does it observe itself and ask questions about itself? Why does it have the capacity to love and hate?

Again, mind and energy may be much the same thing. If energy is mind then energy is what is traditionally termed 'spirit'.

Quoting EnPassant

Again, mind and energy may be much the same thing. If energy is mind then energy is what is traditionally termed 'spirit'.

Yes. I have concluded that ancient people used the word "spirit" (literally invisible living "breath") as a metaphor for what we now call "Energy". It's the power of agency, the ability to cause change, the potential for useful work. Animists were closer to modern science than the later Judeo-Christian notions of a non-physical Soul for humans only. But Science has determined that even physical Energy is equivalent to what we now call "Information". And, before Claude Shannon, "Information" referred only to mind stuff. So, Matter, Energy, and Mind are different forms of the same thing : Information.

Mass Energy Information Equivalence Principle : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335673226_The_mass-energy-information_equivalence_principle

Information : [i]Claude Shannon quantified Information not as useful ideas, but as a mathematical ratio between meaningful order (1) and meaningless disorder (0); between knowledge (1) and ignorance (0). So, that meaningful mind-stuff exists in the limbo-land of statistics, producing effects on reality while having no sensory physical properties. We know it exists ideally, only by detecting its effects in the real world.
For humans, Information has the semantic quality of aboutness , that we interpret as meaning. In computer science though, Information is treated as meaningless, which makes its mathematical value more certain. It becomes meaningful only when a sentient Self interprets it as such.
When spelled with an “I”, Information is a noun, referring to ideas & things. When spelled with an “E”, Enformation is a verb, referring to energy and processes.[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html

Quoting A Seagull

Perhaps the best overall model is that of a quantum wave.

Not quite the same as particle or interference wave. It's more a mathematical device for predicting certain quantum properties.

What do we know about energy?

Something we all can relate to...

By connecting electronics to power sources (energy deposits), they run; there is no technicality to 'adding energy' (beyond proper receptors and transmitters).

Humans live off of the Sun and Earth energies (light, heat, food, essential gasses, etc.)

Energy is contained in a cycle, it isn't ever captured but rather misdirected (refe. energy deposits).

Something I relate to...

Energy is capable of 'jumping'; for example, from the plug socket, across wires, to devices.

pre-Conclusion

Do humans produce an equal ratio of energy as their atoms or are they reliant on the universe's energy production?

Are we half-offline/half-online sometimes?

I'm feeling quite low now - not very energetic - but I can move, think and order myself. I do feel as if I'm half-offline/half-online. Energy hasn't quite made that jump, yet.

Energy is common, it is in all things in this gigantic universe. Perhaps it is a property of all existence.

I try now to think of an energy-less existence, the best I can do is imagine something 1 or 2-dimensional.

Conclusion

Energy is fodder; atoms feed from energy and create forms; forms produce energy that's fed on, and forms feed on other forms.

Clouds move and combine because of planetary functions (like atoms feeding from energy), creating strikes of lightning (forms producing energy); sometimes there's a man with a technology apt enough to receive it (forms feeding on other forms).

Edit; I know I'm wrong here, but it was worth a try. Right?

Quoting Gnomon

So, Matter, Energy, and Mind are different forms of the same thing : Information.

But there must be substance if there is to be anything. Information by itself is abstract. There must be mind or substance to hold the information in being.

Energy is like money... it makes the world go around.

Quoting EnPassant

But there must be substance if there is to be anything. Information by itself is abstract. There must be mind or substance to hold the information in being.

Yes. Information requires some kind of Mind to contain & process specific Concepts. But in my thesis, Generic (creative) Information is the Universal Substance of Spinoza. It's not only abstract, but also Metaphysical. And, so is Energy.

According to modern physics, energy is not a physical thing, but the process of Change, and the invisible, intangible "substance" of Matter. (E = MC^2) You have never seen Energy per se, but your senses are tuned to detect changes in matter caused by inputs of Energy, or loss as Entropy.

Spinoza used the term "substance" in the sense of fundamental essence, rather than the more common meaning of material stuff. And I use the term "Information" in its original sense of the abstract contents of a mind, rather than the 1s & 0s in a computer, embodied in energy states (modes). :nerd:

Universal Substance : The most distinctive aspect of Spinoza's system is his substance monism; that is, his claim that one infinite substance—God or Nature—is the only substance that exists.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/spinoz-m/
According to Spinoza, everything that exists is either a substance or a mode. A substance is something that needs nothing else in order to exist or be conceived. Substances are independent entities both conceptually and ontologically. A mode or property is something that needs a substance in order to exist, and cannot exist without a substance [matter is a Mode of existence, and energy is the Substance that creates the mode of existence]
https://www.iep.utm.edu/spinoz-m/

What is Energy made of? : https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/14444/what-is-energy-made-of

Information : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html

Reply to jgill "In physics, energy is the quantitative property that must be transferred to an object in order to perform work on, or to heat, the object"

This is the definition I would give. While energy is conserved, the amount of energy capable of doing work is not conserved. It is decreasing. More and more of it becomes heat and the difference in temperature between systems in the universe we live in is approaching equilibrium. Once the universe reaches thermal equilibrium, energy will no longer flow. Assuming nothing else happens to it first.

At least that is how I understand it.

Quoting Gnomon

What is Energy made of? : https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/14444/what-is-energy-made-of

I'm quoting this reference to stack exchange because here, in this thread, it's simply a link, buried in a fair sized post. And over on philosophy-forum land it seems there are some people who are treating energy as a type of thing in itself and running with it. For such people I think it's a bit more important to dig deeper, to point out what experts say about energy. So I want to highlight the accepted response here, to unhide it:

AdamRedwine:Energy is not made of anything, energy is a term used to describe a trait of matter and non-matter fields.

...and from various comments:

• "Energy must be made of something. Or else mass itself is not made of anything" - Jus12
• "When people say "matter is converted to energy" it normally means the matter is being converted to some non-matter form. It also normally means the person in question is not a physicist ;-) Physicists rarely (never?) use such misleading terminology; instead we talk about e.g. pair annihilation" - DavidZ

The way I understand it, energy isn't the kind of thing things are made of. Rather, things are just what they are, and if they have time translation symmetry (TTS), then by Noether's Theorem (NT) (granting the principle of least action), there's a special kind of "quantity" (aka, number-with-units) that's conserved; that quantity (the thing you get as what is conserved when you apply NT to TTS) is what energy is. Incidentally, TTS applies to nearly everything in our universe, but at cosmic scales it breaks down; consequentially, conservation of energy applies to nearly all things in our universe, except on cosmic scales, where it breaks down.

Reply to InPitzotl That's how I see it. Things we measure are properties. Energy is a property. Width, depth, and height are spatial properties. They don't exist on their own, things are not made out of width, depth, and height.

Energy happens when atom combine. “ Einstein's equation E = mc2 says that mass can be converted to energy and vice versa. If you extrapolate the expansion rate and temperature of the universe back to much closer to the Big Bang than when the cosmic microwave background was produced, you find that within the first few seconds, the energy of the photons was great enough to create particles like electrons and protons. But along with the ordinary particles, the photons also created the antimatter counterparts to the particles, e.g., anti-electrons (called positrons) and anti-protons. Antimatter is briefly discussed in the context of nuclear fusion and the neutrino sections of another chapter.

The antimatter counterpart of an ordinary particle has the same mass and opposite charge of the ordinary particle (if it is not neutral). When an ordinary particle and its antimatter counterpart collide, they completely annihilate each other to create photons. The process can be reversed if the photons have enough energy (i.e., are high-energy gamma ray photons). Within the first microsecond (10-6 second), the universe was hot enough for the photon radiation to undergo this matter-antimatter particle transformation using massive particles like protons and neutrons. When the temperature dropped to about 1013 K at one microsecond after the Big Bang, this process stopped for the protons but it continued for the less massive particles like the electrons. Neutrons were not created in the energy-matter conversion process but some were created when protons and electrons fused together.”

We are still learning. Chemistry, physics Shows everything is connected.

I'll have another try, but from a different angle this time, approaching things metaphorically.

Males and Females meet, and reproduce. If energy is a driving force, in that image, is children.

Children rely on genetalia to exist. How does the gift or curse of genetalia evovle?

The very first fuana forms on Earth, are not just moving/sensing subjects, but are moving/sensing subjects with genetals.

Do stars and planets have genetalia? I don't know.

Something about genetalia is what's driving our species forward.

Becky: 'Energy happens when atoms combine'.

Seems a tad short-hand for a philosophical answer, but for the most part I agree.

How do atoms combine?

Energy of the Sun is conserved in such a way by Earth that fuana (with genetals) are produced.

Conservation of energy is cyclic(even in technology); an opposite nature in itself requring a beginning and end.

Think of a light bulb, the light is kept in continuum by cycling energy and a technological reaction...

Therefore energy is a force. A force of what though? Is where I'm at.

(Bad conclusion, but not lot's of fluff).

Are stars and planets born and do they die? Yes. Everything dies. A light bulb needs an energy source. What I’m stating is we (and everything) are chemically based. If when we die, we are pure energy no need for time. We are no longer trapped in matter.

What if you made the electricity in an electric engine, all particles, througout the engine, instead of waves. Would there be any difference?

Particle energy is kinetic energy. Which are affected by entropy.. I’ve read in science magazines that wave energy like radio waves, radiation. Etc. are not. The TTS experiment that is referred above was in a closed environment. And within that closed state it is VERY difficult to even produce.It does not show that energy conservation is continuous. Perpetual motion is affected by entropy and is snake oil.

May I ask what drives you to live?