Normal

"Energy cannot be created or destroyed"

Why?

eh

It seems to be a fundemental aspect of the universe. If it could be destroyed, where would it go to? In other words, how do you logically make something cease to exist, without having it break apart into something else?

SlateGreySky

What's interesting to me about the law of conservation of mass/energy is that although physicists seem pretty unanimous in their acceptance of the law, along with the ratio by which mass converts to energy, the vast majority of mass/energy in the universe remains unaccounted-for (so-called "dark matter")!

As for the original point, I think Normal's question becomes interesting in terms of cosmic origins. Since most physicists (I think) concede that physical laws break down at the Big Bang, the law of conservation wouldn't apply at or before the Big Bang. At what point, then, does it begin to apply? Was there a certain fraction of a second when, all of a sudden, the law came into effect?

Seems rather cosmically arbitrary . . . .

eh

I think most physicists do not think a classic description of t=0 is meaningful. The singularity, if replaced by something finite, will not threaten the conservation law.

But then, there are inflation theories where energy is created from the vacuum. The zero net charge of this energy is how they get around conservation laws.

Kat_Somm_Faen

Universe "borrows" existence or the energy from nothing

Heisenberg Uncertainty gives rise to the possiblity of quantum foam in which virtual particles arise from nothing all the time and quantum perturbations or quantum fluctuations arise from these. Its just that Universe was one of those fluctuations that began to expand like Alan Guth suggest by effect or event called "Inflation".

These virtual particles "blink" into and out of existence and therefore we call that "foam". Its like nothigness bubbles with energy and particles pop in and out of existance like bubbles. They do come into existence but they also fall into oblivion. Their life span is finite and its more like a wave really.

You have zero point on the XY coordnates, right? And if you draw a sine wave, for example, you have a negative magnitude below the X and positive above but if you add the two together they equal 0. So you can have two exact same vawe out of synch and with a phase differential of 180 degrees they cancel each other out.

Harmonics, waves, quarks, bozons, leptons, qantum mechanics, tensors, Special and General Theory of Relativity - it all gets crazy after that

I know... I know... It sound crazy.

One needs to devote a signifficant portion of ones time if you want to learn more of the theory behind all of this. Its not like you can use your high school math to explain this. You kinda have to be a PhD in physics ( especially particle physics, nuclear and the like ) or astrophysics, cosmology, quantum mechanics and on.

That is why I always think 0 is infinity after all..... and one is multitude after all. I have these crazy ideas