What is Energy?

For all the talk about saving energy nowadays, there doesn’t seem to be enough talk about energy itself. What is Energy anyway? Well, I can hear a bunch of nerds reading this saying “Energy is the ability to do work”. By the way - that’s not a definition, that’s idiocy. It’s like asking, “What is an automobile?” and then answering, “an automobile is the ability to drive”. Get my point?

So, I ask again, what is energy? What is energy not hidden behind matter (naked energy, so to speak)? Does anybody really know? Well, the last great Scientist, Einstein, was famous for an equation about energy. However, that equation answered the question - What is matter? The answer of course being “Energy”. So, we know that that matter is made of energy, and therefore matter and energy are made of the same thing.

Then, what is this “thing” that makes up matter AND energy? Well, nobody really has an answer. Stephen Hawking (not a great scientist) has pretended to know since 1975, but if he actually did know, we would have hover cars by now. Furthermore, his answer (or the answer of other physicists) is such that most people cannot even follow the logic.

I will simplify the logic here. Basically, most conventional science tells us that matter and energy are made of “mass”, but not the conventional type of mass that has weight. By mass, they mean some tiny strange particles (or strings as some will say) that show resistance when attempting to change their direction (even light “pushes” on something when it hits it - search the internet for ‘solar sail’ for more information).

Why is this mass sometimes matter and sometimes energy? What makes the difference? Well, if you can answer that question, you can probably invent cold fusion.

Basically, energy is made up of these little particles that interact with space, time and each other. What are these particles? Well, scientist discover more and more of them, and there names are starting to get ridiculous (quarks, bosons, “Oh my God particle”). You could spend your whole life just learning the names of these particles, and with CERN, there are going to be a heck of a lot more coming soon to a textbook near you (including some that move faster than the speed of light!).

I don’t want to bore you to death, so let’s keep simplifying: Einstein believed that there was ONE very simple equation that would predict ALL of these particles (he never did find it, but he never gave up believing). So, why haven’t we found this equation the nearly 70 years since Einstein? Well, we are getting to that.

Quarks, bosons, leptons, muons... and so-on. And the definition of the electron changes almost annually. (FYI - electrons have not even been simply particles since the early 1900's). In other words, atoms are no longer "little solar systems" as was once believed. Using this analogy, our current knowledge of particles/energy is reminiscent of a time when we believed that the earth was the center of the Universe...

Consider Ptolemy

Once lived a brilliant man named Ptolemy. He observed the world around himself with immense precision. He re-invented the map of the 'earth-centered solar-system' to fit a number of current conundrums. Basically, as he observed the heavens. Instead of say, Mars simply revolving around the earth - he noted that once in a while, there was this “retrograde motion”. As such, his map had mars revolve around earth, do a little dance called an epicycle, and then revolve around earth again. This was the same of the other planets. His model became increasingly complex, developing strange patterns for all of the planets. AND, his model made mathematical sense, even though it was of course a vastly over-complicated way of explaining it. Oddly enough, had he foregone the current beliefs of his time (where they felt as advanced as we do now), his brilliant mind could have concluded that the sun was the center of solar system, and we would probably have hover cars by now.

Okay, so where am I going with this?

Basically, conventional science finding all of these “particles” is essentially the same as Ptolemy determining all of these “Epicycles”. Basically, these particles are “observed” as part of a phenomenon that we do not understand. There is a CENTRAL point missing and if we discover it, we will find a new math that works better than the existing math. When that happens, we will know what energy is, and more importantly we will be able to control energy more readily.

So to finally answer our question, “What is energy?”, we will require a “quantum leap” in our current understanding of energy, space and time. It will require a scientist that does not conform with the crowd (see Galileo). It will require creativity and not someone who spits out the term, “Energy is the ability to do work”

Until we free the term “energy” and we know what it is, we will be slaves to it. And the readers of this blog will continue to do their best to manage the little energy we can access, through what we here call “energy modeling”.

For more information on that, please see:  "What is Energy-modeling?"