On the Equivocation of Mass and Energy
Sven Gelbhaar
08 October 2008
“Albert Einstein found, as a consequence of his theory of relativity,
that mass and energy are equivalent, and are not separately conserved –
one can be converted into the other.” (Conceptual Physics, page 31,
Benjamin Crowell)
“This means that even a small amount of mass is equivalent to a very large
amount of energy.” (Conceptual Physics, page 31, Benjamin Crowell)
Albert Einstein’s theory of Mass Energy Equivalence was proven with the
nuclear transmutation. “… the first transmutation reactions (such as
7Li+p->2^4He) verified Einstein’s formula to an accuracy of +/- 0.5%.”
(1) The reader will note that this proves nothing at all beyond what the
binding (nuclear) energy of the elements that were used in these
experiments are. It does not prove that you can for instance convert one
gram of lead into 1,000,000 joules of energy, all it states is how much
energy must be overcome to release protons and neutrons from those
elements. Once more for the record: it has not been proven that you can in
fact (as is commonly believed) convert mass into energy, nor energy into
mass. Even chemical reactions simply re-organizes elements, in certain
situations ejecting spare parts whose energy can then be tapped – but
there is no conversion of mass to energy.
I conjecture that the need to innately tie energy into mass came into being
when there arose the need to explain how energy can be properly conserved
from such eventualities as the heat death of the universe, where no energy
can be tapped from existing bodies of mass. Even then, however, the
potential energy is there inherent in the system in the form of the 4
natural forces, but they simply counteract one another until kinetic energy
ceases to be present (in one model of the heat death), or until nuclear
fusion and fission cease to occur (in another).
Now let us delve into the more philosophical realm of this issue. What is
energy without mass? It’s meaningless. Energy is a property of mass –
it describes mass. How much kinetic energy an object has is how fast that
object is moving. How much electrical energy a battery has is how many
spare electrons it possesses. One cannot, as experiments have proven,
convert an object into the mere description of an object.
This leads us to conclude that one cannot equivocate mass and energy, and
also that there is no need to do so to begin with. Until such a time as
one can prove that all mass can be converted into energy [that is to say,
that the energy derived from an object is more than the energy input
(including inherently present in the atoms thereof)], we have no logical
grounds for believing as much.
References
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E%3Dmc2, 8 October 2008
- Conceptual Physics, Benjamin Crowell, 25 July 2008