As far as I understand energy and matter are two sides of the same coin, and I thought I knew that energy/matter could not be created or destroyed, but then a comment I read on askphysics implied that’s not true. (Something about an electron emitting photons, idk it was not targeted at a 5 year old).
So is there a set amount of energy/matter in the universe since the Big Bang, or can it be created/destroyed?
And bonus question that’s only slightly related, when an atom is broken up into quirks, will the quirks reform into an atom?
In: Physics
Energy and matter are *basically* the same thing. It is possible to turn energy into matter and vice versa.
When a plant uses sunlight, water, and oxygen to make sugar what it is technically doing is gluing the water and carbon dioxide together using that sunlight. Basically, the sunlight forms into a bond which holds the atoms together and that bond is technically a miniscule amount of matter.
When you digest sugar to move your body around, you are breaking that bond, converting the miniscule amount of matter that it contained back into energy.
There was a set amount of matter/energy in the universe when the big bang occurred. As far as anyone can tell, since that time everything in the universe is slowly getting further and further apart from everything else. What is causing this is that energy/matter is being added into the universe.
The source of that new energy/matter isn’t known and the rate at which energy is being added is too small for that energy to form into matter. Instead, that new energy just results in us perceiving a slight force that seems to repel everything in the universe from everything else.
>when an atom is broken up into quirks, will the quirks reform into an atom?
The issue with this question is that quarks are a sort of condensed version of energy. Breaking a quark out of an atom requires you to put so much energy into the atom that the energy that made up the atom is no longer condensed. If the energy inside of the atom is no longer condensed, then you no longer have quarks. Instead, you get a form of matter known as a quark gluon plasma, which is kind of made up of quarks but also kind of isn’t.
As that quark gluon plasma recondenses, it will *mostly* form into quarks which will form into the component parts of atoms. Some of it may turn into dark matter, in which case that matter will appear to be “lost” to a human observer, since dark matter is able to pass through normal matter and is also extremely difficult to detect.
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