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My current intuition goes something like this: Energy MUST flow. No matter how energy is captured and stored, there is a pressure for it to continue moving.
by jmcqk6 3y ago
My current intuition goes something like this:
Energy MUST flow. No matter how energy is captured and stored, there is a pressure for it to continue moving.
The movement of energy means that matter is always moving, and new configurations are always being "discovered."
Some configurations allow for energy to flow more easily, and when one of those configurations is "discovered" the movement of energy keeps that configuration in place. I think it's literally a strange attractor from chaos theory.
Areas of stable energy flow create correlations across space time that allow for more complex correlations to emerge.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rileyphone 3y agoHere’s an interesting network-focused view as to why that might be: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2012.2863 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2012.286...
- sydbarrett74 3y agoSorry if this question is answered elsewhere in this post's replies, but would you say that matter can be viewed as 'captured' energy, or energy at rest?
- nyssos 3y ago> matter can be viewed as 'captured' energy, or energy at rest? No, matter isn't 'captured' energy any more than it's 'captured' mass or momentum. Energy is a quantity, not a substance.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoEnergy is a behavior, or alternatively a probability.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoTweak your intuition: energy IS motion. When things are not moving, there is no energy. When there is energy, things are moving.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoThen energy is relative? An object is 'stationary' in space, a comet comes along and hits it. The comet has energy. OR the comet is just sitting there, 'stationary', the object hits it. Not the object has energy. There's no total energy to a system, except calculated from some point of view?
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoenergy is a term we use that describes the probability for some unit of matter to be in a different state at time T' than it was at time T. if you consider the state to include position - relative to a frame of view - then energy describes (at least in part) the likelihood that the position at time T' is different than at time T
- jmcqk6 3y agoHow would you describe a rock sitting on the top of a mountain? It is not moving relative to the matter around it, but it certainly contains quite a bit of energy, in a variety of different forms. I am trying to recognize that even in that rock, energy is dissipating in multiple ways, and any number of different events can lead to it dissipating in different ways. I suppose you can say that the individual atoms composing the rock are moving, but are those movements connected to the potential energy it has by virtue of being far from the relative minimum in a gravity well? That rock could fall down the mountain mostly intact - a highly energetic event, compared to being eroded away chemically by rain over millennia.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agopotential energy is. IMO, largely a pedagogical tool. it's an explanatory position, rather than a thing. the rock, does, obviously "contain" energy thanks to e=mc2. but the notion that the rock is energetically in a different state as it sits on top of the mountain that when it sits at the bottom never sat well with me in high school, and it still doesn't, 45 years later.