• Question: If energy can't be created or destroyed then how does it exist?

    Asked by to Thomas, Saiful, Piers, Meggi, Laurence, Karl, Javier, Chris on 9 Jan 2017. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Piers Barnes

      Piers Barnes answered on 9 Jan 2017:

      I don’t think the scientific method has produced a satisfactory answer to this question yet. We don’t know if the universe is finite or infinite. So far, energy appears to be conserved within the observable universe, but we don’t know how it got there in the first place.

      I think there are a lot of very smart people working on this problem, but the nature of the scientific method is that we will only ever be able test if their ideas or hypothesis are wrong, we can’t know for certain that an idea or hypothesis is correct.

Comments

  • Photo: harry-georgiou

    harry-georgiou commented on :

    I think that according to the theory of the big bang it popped into existence in the moment of the big bang with space-time from nothingness. What do we call energy for starters…? this is another concept which at its heart we need to get to grips with. I guess at the concept of energy it requires action, an existence of something with potential to exist in as it is and also as another form while having the potential act upon something else to make a a difference to that other object. But before the big bang this did not exist for not even energy existed in the big bang as it was pure nothingness according to the accepted theory of the big bang. Other theories are flying around but at the moment we still need to work on the cosmological theory of the beginning of the universe despite what a lot of experts might suggest… we are not sure yet.