Nautilus

Is the Law of Conservation of Energy Cancelled?

Physics is often baffling, but one principle seems rock-solid: the law of conservation of energy. The world contains this thing called “energy” whose amount never changes. It can change its form or go from one body to another, but its total amount remains constant. Everything from the arc of a well-kicked football to the purring of a car engine depends on this law. It makes energy a precious commodity, counted, hoarded, and fought over.

The quantum world is uncertain; attributes such as energy are ill-defined or fuzzy.

We physicists have learned that our bodies do not merely use energy, but consist of it. Einstein’s formula = identifies mass as a form of energy, one that can be converted to other forms (by a nuclear bomb, say) or created from those forms (in a particle collider). The formula strengthens our intuition that energy is the basic stuff of which things are made. When one gets deeper

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