Since E=mc^2, energy a state of matter?
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No. Mass is defined as anything that occupies volume and has mass. Something like a photon has energy but no mass so it isn’t matter. Since it isn’t matter it can’t be a state of matter, and the energy it contains can’t be a state of matter.
Matter is a form of energy, but energy is not a form of matter.
The full equation is E^2 = m^2 × c^4 + p^2 × c^2, so something can be energy without mass, but you can’t have mass without energy.
Energy is not a state of matter but they are two different forms of the same thing. Energy and mass are interchangeable in the formula. They only differ by a constant, the speed of light squared. When looking at an object in a frame of rest, it’s energy is equal to its mass multiplied by c^2. Think about a penny, it doesn’t have much mass, right? Now let’s say you could convert the entire penny into energy. You’d have enough energy to power a large city for several years. That is only if we had the power to turn it into pure energy, we don’t and most likely won’t. It would take an incredible amount of heat and pressure, more than currently found in the Sun.
A cool fact about the constant c, it’s short for celeritas, the latin word for “speed”.
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