Horizon: How Big Is the Universe? (T) Mon 21:00

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HillBill

Bushcrafter through and through
Oct 1, 2008
8,141
88
W. Yorkshire
Not at all. If you are creating electricity by creating matter, then you are creating matter, what process is needed t create it. Its merely the next step down from the previous question, which didnt draw such a comment. Why should it now? :)

By getting into a philosophycal or religious discusion that will get the thread locked.
 

mousey

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jun 15, 2010
2,210
254
42
NE Scotland
I was always taught you can't create energy [or destroy it], only alter it from one type into another i.e. potential to kenetic.

So there is no more or less energy than there ever has been, it's just in a different state now than what it was. So if you need mass to make electricity [energy] there is no more or less mass than there ever has been, only now it's occupying a bigger space, or spread out over a bigger area?

But then like everything - surely it must have come from somewhere?

I haven't even watch the program and I'm still confused...
 
Last edited:
Feb 15, 2011
3,860
2
Elsewhere
heat is energy - heat doesn't lose energy. Heat is the sensation of the presence of energy. Cold is just a description of an unnaceptable amount of heat energy defined by our own parameters.

Heat does loose energy. the thermal bridge is always from hot to cold; for example when putting an ice cube into a drink, it is not the ice that cools the drink but the heat in the liquid trying to warm up the ice cube thus loosing it's energy.
Similar thing happens with heat loss through windows in a house.
 

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,114
67
Florida
heat is energy - heat doesn't lose energy. Heat is the sensation of the presence of energy. Cold is just a description of an unnaceptable amount of heat energy defined by our own parameters.

Thank you. And energy requires matter. Heat is basically energy from molecular movement or radiant heat (heat by energy transfer through infra-red lightwaves) "cold" being the absence of heat merely requires that no heat be present. Just as I said about an empty glass; "dry" does not exist as "something" It's just the absence of water.
 

mountainm

Bushcrafter through and through
Jan 12, 2011
9,990
12
Selby
www.mikemountain.co.uk
Heat does loose energy. the thermal bridge is always from hot to cold; for example when putting an ice cube into a drink, it is not the ice that cools the drink but the heat in the liquid trying to warm up the ice cube thus loosing it's energy.
Similar thing happens with heat loss through windows in a house.

No heat is energy. Heat is a measure of energy.

It's hot == lots of energy
It's cold == not much energy

heat cannot lose energy.

it's the equivalent of saying:
My Inches have lost length. An inch is a measure of length.
 

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,114
67
Florida
Heat does loose energy. the thermal bridge is always from hot to cold; for example when putting an ice cube into a drink, it is not the ice that cools the drink but the heat in the liquid trying to warm up the ice cube thus loosing it's energy.
Similar thing happens with heat loss through windows in a house.

No. Heat IS energy. It dissapates and transfers to become a different type of energy (heating air causes a ballon to rise but as the heat energy dissapates, it becomes potential energy of the mass of the ballon held aloft or kinetic energy of the same ballon decending.
 

treadlightly

Full Member
Jan 29, 2007
2,692
3
65
Powys
As a species we struggle with something from nothing, we are suspicious of it -

thus we create something intangible which always has been and always is which in turn creates something that comes from nothing. The layer of abstraction between the the creator and the created seems to make us feel more comfortable but it just moves the problem. What then created the creator.

Something that always was/is makes us feel secure, as surely if something can come from nothing then just as easily nothing can come from something *click* GONE. So we cling to a rock - the ever permanent lighthouse that guides our way through he philosophical quagmire of existence.

But in truth the only thing in existence you can be sure of is yourself, and even then you can't prove to yourself you exist or even existed beyond the moment you currently inhabit.


Reminds me of another "rule" I remember from school - "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, just converted from one form to another".

Maybe we struggle with the idea of something from nothing because all around us things come from something then go back into something else. We are born, we grow, we die. Go back far enough and the earth will not have formed, go forward far enough and it will be no more. Same applies to the sun. But in each case we can trace the path of energy that temporarily is arranged to form an earth and a sun and then is re-arranged in another form.

Something from nothing crashes through all those notions. Yet at some point we have to confront it I suppose.
 

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,114
67
Florida
I was always taught you can't create energy [or destroy it], only alter it from one type into another i.e. potential to kenetic...

That was Newtonian physics. It also stated that matter could not be created or destroyed. However the nuclear bomb does just that. The smallest particle of matter is an atom; if you split that atom, then it is no longer matter. But doing so "creats" an enormous amount of energy. As my university physics professor taught it, matter and enegy are a continum. One can be destroyed to creat the other but the total between the two remain the same. At least in our ability

However the Big bang theory states that BOTH were simultaneously created.

My last post for now as I have to go to a Dr.'s appt.
 

HillBill

Bushcrafter through and through
Oct 1, 2008
8,141
88
W. Yorkshire
Aye, agree with that. The ability to see something and describe what you see is often extremely difficult. How would one describe a colour to a blind person? :)


Language falls short when discussing fundamental issues. Check out Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
 

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