Is the law of conservation of energy right?

Good point, but I suppose if the energy went right through, then it wasn’t pumped in.

Hi Serendipper,

Here is my understanding of the situation.

In a conserved energy model, the total input energy = total escaped energy + total absorbed energy.

In these experiments, the total input energy is greater than the total escaped energy. This means that some energy must have been absorbed. However, if the frequency of the total absorbed energy is not equal to certain allowable quantities, then the total absorbed energy is simply lost.

What one would expect is that the Hydrogen atom would simply become agitated in a continuous manner to account for the absorbed energy. But except for these special cases, the Hydrogen atom simply acts as an energy sink – the energy simply goes away.

The equation is no longer balanced and the law of conservation energy is no longer valid.

Random babble:

I think that this is historically a big deal. Bohr’s insight into this matter, i.e. changing the equation to only allow for quantum inputs may have been the first use of quantum mechanics.

Another totally random thought is that in one of his popular books, I think it was QED, Feynman talks about how sad it was when he explained to his father that some energy simply goes away. His father paid for his education and now he must dissolution his father of a fundamental belief in Physics.

Thanks for your response, I appreciate it.

Ed3

Energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation can only affect charge as a property of “particles” in relation to the mass of the particle and the strength and distance of the bond (which acts as a spring in mass resonance).

Absorption of energy is when the molecule resonates and the resonant oscillations produce a 180 degree phase-shifted wave that cancels the original. Technically, the wave does not stop, but travels in tandem with the 180 degree wave in cancellation, but the energy was imparted to the molecule and so it’s called “absorption”.

Now if a particle is too heavy or the bond too weak, then a high-frequency wave will not be able to cause the particle to oscillate and will pass right through minimally-affected. If the particle is light or the bond strength is strong, then a low-frequency wave will have no effect.

If you could perform an audio sweep with a sinewave generator in the presence of a wineglass, you’ll eventually find the resonant frequency of the glass and the only point where the glass absorbs significant energy. Otherwise, the energy goes right through.

So, all energy passes through, but at points of “coupling” at resonant frequencies there is a cancellation wave produced that allows for apparent absorption of energy.

Perhaps this image will help:

Hi Serendipper,

Thanks for your response.

I think that the critical point here is whether or not the input energy is equal to the output energy, if the intervening material is not excited.

From my memory, the answer is that output energy is less than the input energy. I could be wrong.

Are you stating categorically that the output energy and the input energy are equal in this case?

It might also be possible that you are stating that you cannot measure the output energy. I would be skeptical about that point, but open to persuasion.

Thanks Ed3

You should definitely hang around more because I really like your style of conversation! And I wish others would endeavor to copy you :smiley:

I think we need to define what “input” and “output” mean. Does input mean the amount of energy that interacts or the amount of energy produced by the thing that is inputting the energy?

I think it depends on how you choose to view a wave that has been cancelled. One view is that the two waves that cancel each other travel together and the other view is that they cancel and cease to exist. The problem is that the wave that leads and causes the resonant re-radiation is ahead in time by a little bit and therefore couldn’t possibly be cancelled by an effect that it caused. So it seems no matter what, some energy is going straight through.

The next problem is what do you mean by output? All energy is eventually going to leave through cooling. Even if you had 2 objects in steady state temperature, they are still keeping each other warm by radiating their own heat to each other. Temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy in molecules which are generating electromagnetic radiation by virtue of the motion of charges in the molecules. So even if something is a steady temperature, it’s still losing its original energy, but gaining new energy from the environment to offset it. Because everything is above absolute zero, everything is in motion and consequently losing energy.

Before I can make concrete statements, I suppose I’d need good definitions to make statements about :wink: Maybe it’s fair to say that all the energy goes straight through, but some of it is delayed in time from our perspective, but not from the perspective of the energy itself. From the perspective of light from the farthest galaxy, 13 billion years was an instantaneous event. From the perspective of energy/light, all time is instant, and so we can say that all the energy inputted goes right through instantly.

The Conservation Laws leave out one critical thing, that energy and information are interchangeable and indistinguishable in specific contexts, begging the question of exactly what is being conserved. For example, Finnish physicists recently constructed the first autonomous version of Maxwell’s Demon that sorts electrons according to their charges without expending any energy in the process. Its not a source of free energy, but its as if they had simply waved a magic wand and empowered their otherwise humble copper transistor to convince unruly electrons to sort out their own differences for a change and make themselves more productive. The Quantum Zeno Effect is another example, where a watched pot of entangled quanta will never boil or change in any way whatsoever, begging the question of does it represent energy or information.

If the universe is infinite, then the amount of energy in it must be infinite.
Since that is not a discrete quantity, the law of conservation of energy seems problematic.

Assuming 42 is as good an answer as we’ll ever get, the universe can be considered simultaneously finite and infinite. Among other things, this would explain why space-time is flatter than Relativity proposes and why astronomers have recently proposed that some of what they are observing seems to only be explainable as “something appearing out of nothing”. They are encountering the same problem physicists did with quantum mechanics, and their observations should only grow more inexplicable over time. The reason physicists encountered it first with tiny quanta, is only because they are easier to study in the laboratory.

That corresponds to my own episto-ontology.

I do think that energy comes out of “nothing” at the smallest scale only.
This “nothing”, we might say the backdrop to our ontological models, can not be considered as a pure empty negative, as it underlies the possibility of existence.

This is a most intricate subject that brings us from physics into the discovery that our epistemology excludes proper logical closure.

Proposal:
What is conserved is structurally integrity. Energy is being conserved as a function of it.

That’s along the lines of John Wheeler, Bucky Fuller, and Constructal Theory, but they are too classical to even begin to describe the situation. You need to think more fundamentally in terms of metaphors, with what’s missing from this picture, merely being a metaphor for what it contains. Light has no demonstrable meaning outside of the context of its own shadow. Everything can be thought of as expressing different contradictions, and organized from the least contradictory appearing to the most. Time itself is so mysterious and contradictory appearing in cases like the quantum Zeno Effect because it is a more fundamental issue.

The quantum Zeno Effect is, Im proud to day, very naturally predicted using my self-valuing logic.

It is inevitable that once you observe (value) an event it becomes part of your system.
Once something is part of our system you are part of its. What we don’t realize or aren’t taught enough is that when we observe, we only observe very tiny fractions of potentially ascribable properties. Our very observation is a selecting and limiting, tying down, a valuing in pre-existent terms.

((Valuing is more or less the opposite of being conscious. Consciousness floats on valuing but if a particle were to be conscious its responses would be radically less “astute”, immediate, necessary. A particle would become moral and hesitant. Meaning only that consciousness is a slow amalgamate of elementary valuings))

Humans have thought in term of isolated “bits” forever, but there is no such thing.
The very existence of a particle implies with absolute certainty that it is tied to the approach of other particles.

On the behaviour of light; much is clarified when one stops thinking of a photon a a particle or object, and stops considering light and the speed of light as two separate issues. As Ive come to realize, light is its speed. There isn’t anything else to it. It is potentiality on the move, and this moving is what allows it to relate to mass through converting itself into spinning self-relating potential rather than a straight line of potential.

Back to self-valuing logic, or value ontology as it has been termed the past 7 years; it can be seen as the logic underlying both Relativity and QM. Both are actually a result of the same necessity; the only difference is that one can not transpose an observer into the reference frame of a subatomic quantum. “God plays dice” in that no one else is in there but the sub-substantial instance of behaviour, no one is there to interpret the momentum and location in terms of each other, except the instance itself.

For me, yin-yang dynamics are not some abstract concept, but a daily reality, while ontology is a poor substitute for epistemology and vice versa.

Physics isn’t a word game.

Assuming 42 is as good an explanation as any other, that’s exactly what physics is, a word game. It would mean all our words and concepts only have demonstrable meaning in specific contexts, making physics a pragmatic practice requiring the equivalent of a syntax rather than semantics. My work assumes that energy and information are ultimately indistinguishable, and experiments have demonstrated that the two can be exchanged with one another without expending any energy in the process. Classical physics takes the integral approach, while I am attempting to discern the best ways to take differentials, because what’s missing from this picture can sometimes make all the difference in the world.

Yes, thats why I don’t assume 42 is an explanation.

There is only one explanation; the right one.

I really think there is only one way to look at physics and resolve its paradoxes. At least I can’t imagine there is another way than the one that integrates our entire system of orientation - not merely information, but value hierarchy, which causes drive, control, magnetism, power.

The approach I’m using can describe everything as obeying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a particle-like model that can also be expressed as a spectrum of desires. Physicists have already played around with the mathematics. If there were only one way to do physics, they would not require philosophers.

Would this mean energy needs to be “safe and warm” before it can be “actualized”?

Please elaborate. Im just reading whats on the pyramid.

Fermionic matter can be said to convey more information than energy, with a grain of sand in the depths of space not really doing anything until it interacts with something else. Bosons such as photons convey forces, energy, and information and are instantly emitted and absorbed by electrons with perfect fidelity and efficiency. In other words, photons are neither too hot nor too cold for electrons, but just right, and it is the electrons themselves getting too hot or too cold that can make a difference in how energy is transformed into information and vice versa. For almost pure information to be transformed into raw energy requires extreme contexts such as a fusion reactor converting some of the mass in its fuel into raw energy, or the conscious human mind figuring out how to build a fusion reactor.

However, this expresses a context dependence that doesn’t obey simple metaphysical logic. For example, Finnish researchers created the first autonomous Maxwell’s Demon that can sort electrons according to their charges without expending any energy in the process. Its not a source of free energy, but the experiment demonstrates how the identity of energy and information is context dependent. Extremes of any kind are excluded because every context requires a significant amount of content to be humanly conceivable, and the two will always transform into one another before becoming inconceivable.

I like this.