Pure Energy Nonsense

Energy is often talked about as if it is a thing rather than a property, and this leads to a lot of confusion, with some people talking about pure energy as if such a thing exists.

Profound sounding nonsense

I was reminded of this the other day when I came across a comment making the bold assertion that “everything is pure energy”.

That’s a profound sounding statement. But it holds no meaning. If everything is pure energy, what more is there to discuss? No model can be devised. Nothing can be explained.

In a world where everything is pure energy, matter is energy, motion is energy, forces are energy. My fingernails are pure energy, and they grow because of energy. It’s a nonsensical model.

Energy manifests itself in many forms

The confusion surrounding energy is partially due to its many forms. There’s potential energy, kinetic energy, chemical energy, nuclear energy, etc.

Energy can also be transformed into mass, which is often confused with matter.

Since matter is a thing, the logic goes that matter must be energy. But this logic is based on the false assumption that matter and mass is the same thing.

However, mass is not the same as matter. Mass is an abstraction, sometimes meaning inertia and sometimes meaning gravity.

When matter absorbs energy, it gains inertia and gravitational pull. When matter releases energy, it loses inertia and gravitational pull. However, matter is never created or destroyed in this process. It’s merely gaining and losing some of its so called mass.

That’s the true meaning of the formula E = mc².

Another source of confusion is that no-one has ever seen energy. There’s something mysterious about it. So, it attracts the attention of ethereal thinkers who like to say profound sounding stuff.

Everyone from Yogi gurus to science experts talk about energy as something essential, which of course it is. But that doesn’t make energy a thing in itself.

Energy is a property

Energy is a property of particles. So, any talk of energy as something separate from particles is a little like talking about height or width with no reference to anything material.

There is no such thing as pure height or pure width. The same goes for pure energy.

Furthermore, energy is never converted into anything but a different kind of energy.

Nuclear processes never convert energy into matter. Nor do they convert matter into energy.

A nuclear reactor doesn’t convert uranium into energy. It splits uranium into lighter materials, and high energy particles are released in the process.

It is the high energy particles that heat the water that powers the nuclear reactor. Nuclear binding energy is released from the uranium and transferred to the water. Matter is neither created nor destroyed in the process. It’s merely split into smaller parts.

Then there’s the process of electron-positron annihilation where an electron and positron meet to form a high energy photon. Some speak of this as if matter is transformed into pure energy.

But here again, we see that energy is merely moved from a potential state in an electron-positron pair, to a kinetic state in a high energy photon.

At no point is there any energy separate form particles.

Conclusion

There simply aren’t any situations in which energy is observed in a pure form. Energy is always associated with particles. The idea that it’s a thing rather than a property is wrong and leads to nonsensical statements that have no bearing on reality.