True or False:Energy can be created and destroyed.?

Question

A. true
B. false

Answer 1

Well, you have gotten mostly the standard High School answer of (B) False.

Then, you get the "relatively" more informed (no pun intended) College answer of energy equal mass; but here you get (A) True, which indicates that they really don't understand Einstein Special Relativity, since Einstein is saying that mass and energy is conserved.

Then you get a even better and more educated answer by taking into account of Quantum Mechanics, aka Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The answer here is indeed (A) true, but this is NOT so exciting since we are talking about violating the laws of energy conservation on the order of Planck time, that is 10^-43 sec, not very long at all.

So here I will give my answer: (A) TRUE. Energy is being create all the time; however, energy density (that is energy per unit volume of space) is conserved.

The reason I say that the answer is (A) is because our Universe is currently expanding, and this expansion is accelerating due to the negative energy pressure produced by the vacuum of space. As it turns out that space itself has energy, and this energy permeates through out the entire Universe. As the Universe expands, the amount of space or vacuum increases, and so does this vacuum energy.

Physicists call this "Dark Energy". Einstein called it "Cosmological Constant".

Answer 2

A = TRUE, according to the Heisenberg indetermination principle. The quantum mechanics equation is

dE * dt >= hbar /2

where dE is the energy created, dt is the time of the process, an hbar = [h/(2*Pi)], with h = Planck's constant.

So energy can be created from quantum vacuum, for a time related to its amount, and then that amount of energy dissapears. When applied to the electromagnetic field, that formula states that also in empty space the electromagnetic field has an energy, called the vacuum energy. Given the equivalence between energy and mass, the vacuum energy can manifests itself creating couples of short-lived particles and anti-particles, which disappear in a time interval determined by the above equation.

More info in

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

Answer 3

B. False. Energy may not be created or destroyed, only changed in form. The Mass Engergy Equivalency is depicted mathematically by E=MC(squared) where E is Energy, M is Mass, and C is the speed of light.

Answer 4

What is energy? Mass is composed of it, and a gravitational field (c2 = e/m) is also composed of it. Mass is able to be converted into energy, and energy (E =hf) is able to be formed into mass (electron pairs), but neither leave physical existence. The physics trilogy describes our universe as being formed solely of physical time - E = m2, m = E/c2, and c2 = E/m. Notice that in the first equation that time "c2" is the multiplier and in the second the divider. In both it is the basis of physical existence. Physical time has only the existence of present time. It is totally separated in physical value from either the past or future. So, in order to destroy energy, a person would have to destroy physical time. Can't be done.

Answer 5

Definitely false. Energy can only be converted to other types of energy, never created or destroyed. Law of Conservation

Answer 6

Your talking about Laws invented by men, yet95% of the universe is unknown, by that I proclaim, Not Understood! Why does men think they have all the answers. If the laws of men were a constant, we would have never discovered electricity.... and so forth. Why is it that so many ignorant people are in contempt belief that rules cannot be broken. maybe its because they are afraid of the unknown. Shut up and let it go. If your repeating laws stated in a book by dead men, then you are a waste of breathe. come up with reasonable ideas that actually compliment the expansion and advancement in human understanding and knowledge. When someone actually has something important enough for me to respond to, I will otherwise your a figment of the imagination on a World wide web that has useless words and are ubiquitously unimportant to the future of the idea of utopia and constant existence.

Answer 7

Doesn't the equation e=mc squared mean that a great deal of energy can be created from a small amount of mass? Isn't that the principle of nuclear energy and weapons? And, I suppose, that in the future, we will be able to convert a great deal of energy into a small amount of mass, if we so desire.

Answer 8

False
First Law of thermodynamics says that the total energy of universe remains constant. In other words, Energy is not created nor destroyed.

Answer 9

True, as the residents of Hiroshima found out to their dismay in August of 1945. About one gram of uranium was transformed into energy. But under normal circumstances, it is safe to say that energy is conserved, so previous responses are mostly correct.

Answer 10

It's true that Einstein's relativity shows that the independent conservation of mass and classical energy does not hold, but a hybrid quantity of "rest" energy plus classical energy is conserved, which is simply referred to as the energy. It is called rest energy because even at rest, a particle of mass m has energy mc^2. In a process, then, mass, a materialization of energy, and classical energy may be converted from one to the other, so long as their sum, the energy, remains a constant. So, conservation of energy does hold in relativity, though conservation of classical energy does not.

If you think mass is conserved, explain the annihilation of a particle and its antiparticle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Feynmann_Diagram_Gluon_Radiation.svg