Is it true everything is made up of energy, including us?

Question

I heard that light is energy and so is everything else so are we nothing but particles energy?

Answer 1

It's more accurate to say that everything *has* energy, not "made up of". Energy is a property, like mass, speed, or color, not a substance like iron, air, or ink. So, things are not "made up of" energy any more than ink is made up of blue. The energy of a particle of mass m at rest, for example, is mc^2. If it moves at nonrelativitistic speed v, its energy is increased by 0.5mv^2. Get it?

Answer 2

First - everyone needs to get something straight: energy is not some kind of "stuff." There is no "pure energy" that you hear about in comic books and science fiction shows. Energy is a property of particles.

Some particles also have a property called mass and make up matter (particularly baryons and leptons). We aren't actually sure what causes mass (here's hoping that CERN's LHC finds the Higg's Boson and finally answers this one) but we do know that these massive particles can be transformed into bosons which are force carrier particles and sometimes massless (such as photons) in certain type of reactions (e.g. nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, matter-antimatter annihilation). Additionally, fermions can be formed from energy borrowed from either the vacuum or from absorbed massless particles (this sentence is a very oversimplified).

These bosons, particularly the photon which is the carrier particle for the electromagnetic force (i.e. light, infrared radiation, x-rays, etc.) is often misunderstood as "energy." Photons are still particles - but they are very efficient at carrying energy and imparting on other particles.

So in a long winded way, I am saying that no, we are not "made up of energy" in a meaningful sense of the term. We are made up of particles which can be formed from transfer of energy between other particles. Does that help you out?

Answer 3

The universe (everything) consists of only two fundamental "substances." There's energy, which is always some form of electromagnetic radiation such as heat, light, x-rays, radiowaves,etc. All these forms of energy are basically similar and differ only by their frequencies. The equation E=hf -- where E is energy, h is Planck's constant, and f is frequency -- illustrates the linear relationship between frequency and time. Basically, the higher the frequency, the higher the energy.

The other fundamental substance is matter (tangible, physical stuff). All matter has mass (which means that all matter has weight, if you put it in a gravity field). Einstein's famous equation E=mc^2 describes the relationship of energy and mass. Again E is energy, but m is mass, and c^2 is the speed of light squared. Because c^2 is an huge number, a little bit of mass contains an enormous amount of energy (Think atomic bomb!).

Notice that I described energy (E) two different ways -- one using electromagnetic waves and one using the mass of matter. Consider that your body is made of chemicals which were created in the cores of early stars before they went super-nova. The stuff that your body is made of was actually energy, long before our solar system was formed. It requires a leap of imagination to appreciate, but you actually are made of starstuff...

It's difficult to explain such a deep question in so few words. If you like, send me an e-mail and discuss it in greater detail.

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Answer 4

Yes. Further, we are composed of a particular kind of energy. In the physics trilogy we find these thoughts: E = mc2, m = E/c2, and c2 = E/m. Notice in this trilogy that the only value that is not changed is that of the "c2" one. It is this value that forms our universe and what everything is made of. It is a particular speed having a very small energy value. We call it time, because everything in our universe relates directly to that value. Were a mas to reach the speed of "c" light, it would no longer have any mass composition, and time would no longer exist to it.

Answer 5

in accordance to the Holy Bible no human being made him. He has continually "been". this isn't a possibility for us to comprehend although because in our existence each and every thing has a starting up and an end.

Answer 6

This goes back to Einstein and
E=mc^2

Energy and mass are proportional. Therefore it is true that matter is energy.

Read here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass-energy_equivalence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_%3D_mc%5E2

Answer 7

Yes!!