Philosopher AI
Purchase queries
What is the difference between matter and energy.
What is the difference between matter and energy? Well, if you take a big block of marble and chip away everything that isn't marble until there's nothing left, what do you have? Matter or energy? Is it matter because it was made out of marble, so we know it's not energy. Or could the chipped-away material actually be considered less than zero mass -- more like negative mass -- even though its shape suggests otherwise?
Well, we know energy is always conserved. That means it was transformed into something else. So you might say the material that's left has negative mass but positive energy.
But is that really true? What if you take the same block of marble and blow it up with a nuclear bomb? You end up with molecules of dust in the air, each molecule carrying negative mass but positive energy.
Is this what we mean when we say matter and energy are the same thing? No. Scientists have never equated mass (matter) with energy.
Perhaps we should look at the word 'force'. A force is a push or pull with an object. Energy and matter are part of every force, so they're everywhere.
Scientists believe that matter and energy are related, but they don't know how. And the reason is simple: no one has ever been able to successfully unify all four physical forces of nature -- gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force (which holds atomic nuclei together), and the weak nuclear force (which governs radioactive decay).