# Mass And Energy= Same Thing

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### #1 AuTongue

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Posted 28 November 2010 - 04:48 PM

correct me if i am wrong plz because even tho this idea is my own i think(i came up with it with very little research it still makes lots of sense to me.

mass and energy are the same thing molecularly just travleing at different speeds.

for example if an apple traveled at the speed of light it would become energy due to its low density (just like all physical objects in comparison to such a speed). it wouldnt be able to hold itself together and thus desintegrate into its most basic atomic masses. seperated and isolated while traveling so fast the individual atoms still(probably) would then break down into its smaller components and would then be seen as energy.

### #2 Little Bang

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Posted 28 November 2010 - 09:45 PM

Au they are the same thing, hf = mC^2.

### #3 CraigD

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Posted 28 November 2010 - 10:41 PM

Welcome to hypography, AuTongue! Catchy member name.

correct me if i am wrong plz because even tho this idea is my own i think(i came up with it with very little research it still makes lots of sense to me.

mass and energy are the same thing molecularly just travleing at different speeds.

for example if an apple traveled at the speed of light it would become energy due to its low density (just like all physical objects in comparison to such a speed). it wouldnt be able to hold itself together and thus desintegrate into its most basic atomic masses. seperated and isolated while traveling so fast the individual atoms still(probably) would then break down into its smaller components and would then be seen as energy.

Your idea isn’t correct according to any scientific theory, or supported by any experimental evidence – but it sounds a bit like one of the most important scientific ideas of the past 100 years.

The equivalence of mass and energy are one of the key principles of modern physics. It states that energy and matter can be converted into one another. For example, chemical molecules change structure to produce energy, and lose a tiny amount of mass. A body is given energy, accelerating it, and gains a tiny amount of mass.

The equation describing the first of these examples is perhaps the most famous one there is:
$E=mc^2$

The equation describing the second, which is known as mass dilation, while not as famous as the first, is among the most well known – I’d say nearly everyone who’s gotten a math or science degree since 1970 know it:
$m = \frac{m_0}{\sqrt{ 1- \left( \frac{v}{c} \right)^2}}$

The second equation explains why your example of an apple traveling at the speed of light is impossible. As $v$ approaches the speed of light, $c$, $m$ approaches infinity. Accelerating an apple to the speed of light would result in it having an infinite mass, and would require an infinite amount of energy, which can’t happen.

These concepts are among the bedrock on which a modern scientific understanding of reality are based. IMHO, anyone with a deep interest in reality needs not only to have heard of them and several others, but to know them, in a deep, intuitive, zen way.

### #4 PetTastic

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Posted 16 May 2011 - 05:01 AM

The bit I am stuck on is does energy distort space causing gravity or is it only mass that does that.
Can you consider matter as a highly condensed form of energy?
Could you talk about the gravity field created by X joules of energy constrained to a location?

### #5 watcher

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Posted 18 May 2011 - 06:07 PM

The bit I am stuck on is does energy distort space causing gravity or is it only mass that does that.

energy is the tensity present in a distorted space caused by mass. then we call it gravity.

Can you consider matter as a highly condensed form of energy?
could you talk about the gravity field created by X joules of energy constrained to a location?

energy is the capacity to do work. what does it means to say, i.e. a concentrated energy ? or what is an evenly distributed energy even means in the first place?

### #6 athinker

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Posted 18 May 2011 - 11:02 PM

Matter is already energy. Some descriptions of matter on a sub nuclear level describe it as waves. It doesn't "break down into its constituent energy" at near the speed of light because it is already its "constituent energy".

It can be convienient to think of matter as "condensed" energy but it should be understood that "condensed" is a relative term. IE condensed relative to what, in terms of what? It is true to some extent, or convienient, to say that matter as energy ocupies less space than, say, electric energy relative to a human scale. But some conceptions of matter and electricity say that on a sub nuclear scale they occupy equal space and that it is just some aspects of their existance and influence on their surroundings that have effect at our scale. In effect the influence of the electron is stronger at "close range", human range, and therefore seems to us to ocupy "more space". But gravity while weaker at "close range" has an effect that reaches farther.

It should also be understood that we don't have a consistant description of the exact nature of matter, space, energy, gravity atc. We have descriptions, analogies, that make very accurate predictions but not exact predictions. In fact some aspects of our descriptions, or analogies, are mutually exclusive of other descriptions, or analogies, of what we think should be the same thing, describable in the same terms with no mutually exclusive paradoxes. We just haven't yet figured out how to describe the things, the influences, in those terms.

### #7 PetTastic

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Posted 19 May 2011 - 12:00 AM

energy is the tensity present in a distorted space caused by mass. then we call it gravity.

energy is the capacity to do work. what does it means to say, i.e. a concentrated energy ? or what is an evenly distributed energy even means in the first place?

"could you talk about the gravity field created by X joules of energy constrained to a location?"
"Constrained" not "concentrated" not that it makes any difference to the argument

If your charge a battery or spin a mass or heat something up you are putting energy inside an area of space and therefore increase the mass inside that volume.You have increased the capacity to do work inside that location by X joules.

If you trap photons inside a location using mirrors, does this have a gravity field associated with the energy of the photons?

Then what about a pulse of light known to be travelling through an area of space?
Is it effected by its own gravity field?
(Light travelling out from a distant supernova?)

### #8 watcher

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Posted 19 May 2011 - 06:40 PM

"could you talk about the gravity field created by X joules of energy constrained to a location?"
"Constrained" not "concentrated" not that it makes any difference to the argument

If your charge a battery or spin a mass or heat something up you are putting energy inside an area of space and therefore increase the mass inside that volume.You have increased the capacity to do work inside that location by X joules.

If you trap photons inside a location using mirrors, does this have a gravity field associated with the energy of the photons?

Then what about a pulse of light known to be travelling through an area of space?
Is it effected by its own gravity field?
(Light travelling out from a distant supernova?)

i don't think that photons have gravity field.
it's like asking if gravitons have gravity field.
photon is the quanta of binding energy between the nucleus and it's orbit.
if it ever produces a field, its the field of our vision.

### #9 PetTastic

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Posted 20 May 2011 - 07:51 AM

i don't think that photons have gravity field.
it's like asking if gravitons have gravity field.
photon is the quanta of binding energy between the nucleus and it's orbit.
if it ever produces a field, its the field of our vision.

Photons are odd things, zero mass, but carry energy and momentum etc.
In Einstein field equations photons are represented as part of the stress-energy tensor (sounds good )
and so do contribute to the gravitational field.

So can you talk about a gravity field corresponding to X joules of energy constrained to a location, does it matter what form the energy is in?

### #10 CraigD

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Posted 20 May 2011 - 10:39 AM

The bit I am stuck on is does energy distort space causing gravity or is it only mass that does that.

Could you talk about the gravity field created by X joules of energy constrained to a location?

For example, a beam of light should not only be affected – it’s path bent by what can be described classically as gravitational force – by a nearby body like a star, but exert an equal and opposite force on that body. You could, in principle, move a star, planet, or less massive body by passing an intense beam of light near it. Calculating how much light to produce a give movement of a given body is left as an exercise for the reader.

Stepping back from far-fetched, “in principle” speculation like the above, we can note that nearly all the gravitational force in our everyday experience is due “energy particles” – gluons – rather than “matter particles” such as quarks, because about 99% of the mass of the protons and neutrons in ordinary atomic matter comes from gluons, which theoretically have 0 rest (invariant) mass.

Can you consider matter as a highly condensed form of energy?

This isn’t a bad metaphor, but it’s still a metaphor.

The precise scientific meaning of “condensed” is “changed from a gas to a liquid”, such as what occurs when steam is condensed into water, a very different concept than “converted from energy to mass”, such as what happens dramatically when a high-energy photon passes near an atomic nucleus and becomes an electron/positron pair, the more common case of a very small body such as a proton being accelerated to nearly the speed of light, increasing its relativistic mass to many times its rest mass, or the more mundane case of the tiny mass increase an ordinary body given an ordinary increase in speed.

Processes where matter “evaporates” into energy are much more common than their reverse. Practically all of the light in the universe is due to the slight decrease in mass of matter undergoing fusion in stars.

It’s OK, and common, to use metaphorical terms in science discussions, but important to remember they’re metaphorical, not literal.

PS: we need to be careful with our terminology around the concept of energy. In the above, I interpreted “energy” in a particle physics manner to mean “a collection of particles with 0 rest mass”, such as photons or gluons. As watcher correctly states in post #5, energy can also be interpreted in a mechanical manner to mean “the potential to do work”, in which case it doesn’t refer to bodies, but to interactions of bodies.

Confusing these and other usages of the term can be ... confusing.
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### #11 PetTastic

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Posted 20 May 2011 - 03:38 PM

Thanks CraigD exactly what I needed to know, but does not help break this stupid Condensing Universe thing.

### #12 watcher

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Posted 20 May 2011 - 06:21 PM

Photons are odd things, zero mass, but carry energy and momentum etc.
In Einstein field equations photons are represented as part of the stress-energy tensor (sounds good )
and so do contribute to the gravitational field.

So can you talk about a gravity field corresponding to X joules of energy constrained to a location, does it matter what form the energy is in?

all that have mass should have the capacity to attract and repel each other. gravitation is an attractive force, but not all attractive forces can qualify as gravitation. i for one believe that gravity field is faster than c, so the attractive force of photon cannot be qualify as gravity in nature.

i think it was max born who said that the compression force on a leaf spring is nothing more than the elasticity of space.
matter as a condensed form of something to me has merit. but i wouldn't call the thing that condenses as energy. energy is more like the compression itself. but what it is that compresses is not known.

### #13 matterdoc

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Posted 11 November 2011 - 11:01 AM

correct me if i am wrong plz because even tho this idea is my own i think(i came up with it with very little research it still makes lots of sense to me.

mass and energy are the same thing molecularly just travleing at different speeds.

for example if an apple traveled at the speed of light it would become energy due to its low density (just like all physical objects in comparison to such a speed). it wouldnt be able to hold itself together and thus desintegrate into its most basic atomic masses. seperated and isolated while traveling so fast the individual atoms still(probably) would then break down into its smaller components and would then be seen as energy.

Mass is the quantitative measure of inertia. It is often used to represent ‘matter content’ of a body. Weight also does the same function. Neither mass nor weight are measure of matter content of a body. Mass and weight are functional entities. They have no objective reality like matter. Since we have no standard (reference) to measure matter, we have to use mass (which is the magnitude of inertial resistance of a body) or weight (which is the measure of acceleration due to gravity, near a standard macro body, in terms of gravitational unit) to represent matter content of a physical body.
Energy is an undefined term. It generally means ability to do work. An ability is a qualification and hence a functional term. It has no real or physical existence. It is the work that modifies parameters of a physical body. Energy appears as a shadow of work, wherever work is present. Energy gained prominence due to simplicity of its use compared to the use of work.
Matter is the real substance that gives objective reality to all physical bodies. It is real and exists in physical form.
Matter, being real entity and mass and energy, being functional entities, they cannot be converted into each other. All suppositions to the contrary are illogical. However, mass and energy being functional mathematical entities they may be converted to or reverted from each other under mathematical manipulations.

Nainan

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