A HIGGS BOSON PARTICLE FOUND!!!!!!!!!

[mjk45]

pezus said:

Salnax said:

BasilZero said:

Salnax said:

wfz said:

 

Off the top of my head: we can convert particles back and forth between matter and energy in order to gain theoretically infinite power. But that won't happen for decades.

 

Infinite power such as powering up things without limited usage?

Power never really gets used up; it just gets turned into something else. But understanding all the basic "stuff" that makes up the universe and how to turn one type of stuff into another type, we could become extremely efficent at using energy.

Metaphor time! What if you had a fire? You just want to use the piece of wood to make some heat, but you also get things like light, smoke, and ashes. So it's not really efficent. But with a sufficent knowledge of physics, we could reuse and recycle the stuff in the smoke, ashes, and light to make a new fire that produces even more heat! AND because the human body gives off as much heat as it gains from the fire over time, you can add that to, meaning you wind up with the same ingredients as you started with. So basically, you have a fire that goes on forever AND get to stay warm at the same time!

Baiscally, my fire metaphor on a really small scale is theoretically possible.

o.O you just described wildfire

 This is an extract from an old Lecturer of mines Professor Paul Davies book Called STAR DOOM  {worth reading it basically is about how the second law of thermodynamics mean that the universe will eventually go dark)

Energy exists in a variety of forms -  chemical , electrical ,mechanical , gravitational and so on - and that energy can be converted from one form to another , for example a steam locomotive converts the chemical energy of coal into mechanical energy of motion it is also known that total energy is always conserved when it changes form , in the real world machines always operate at less than 100% efficiency ,so some energy is always wasted in each successive conversion , the energy doesn't disappear , it merely dissipates , that is we lose control over it  in short it stops being useful energy , heat is a form of energy and many devices have been invented to convert heat into other forms , like steam turbines for electricity generation as one example and it became clear in the 19th century during the creation of these devices that even the most perfect heat engines will always be less than 100% and usually by a fair margin because of some fundamental reasons of physics , to understand this consider a specific example,  such as the heat content of a bucket of water if the bucket is placed in a fridge , the water will freeze because some heat energy has been removed from it , if the energy is put back it will melt again , the fact that a bucket of water contains heat energy  when it is at room temperature is of no use to us if we want to use that energy to say drive a motor, for the heat content is not in useful form , on the other hand when the bucket is placed in a cold environment , some heat energy can be extracted and put to use , for example , the cold air in the vicinity of the warm water will heat up and expand , and could be used to put pressure on a membrane or move a piston , the crucial factor is temperature difference , it is the non uniformity in the distribution of the heat energy that enables the heat to do it's work , in the room the contents of the bucket and the room are at uniform temperature , so there is no net heat flow between bucket and room , this is an expression of a simple but far reaching physical principal , the spontaneous heat flow between bodies is always from hot to cold. When two bodies reach the same temperature the heat flow stops and we say that thermodynamic equilibrium has been achieved , when equilibrium prevails ,no further useful changes can occur without outside interference for instance a temperature difference cannot open up between a bucket of water and the surrounding air , because it would involve heat flowing from cold to hot at some stage in order to cool down the bucket and heat up the air , or vice versa.

The general principal of heat flow is known as the second law of thermodynamics (the first law simply states that heat is a form of energy which can be converted to other forms with out change in in the total energy quantity) Another way of describing the content of the second law is to say that useful things can be done by heat energy when it is ordered or arranged in a non- uniform way. When the heat is spread uniformly through the system , equilibrium prevails , but it is concentrated in one place , then  heat flow occurs and the system evolves or changes in some way , this change will continue as long as there is a thermodynamic disequilibrium such as temperature difference ,this means as far as heat flow is concerned , the essence of activity is disequilibrium , when equilibrium is achieved  , activity ceases.

At this stage an important distinction must be made between microscopic and macroscopic  activity, even in equilibrium there is plenty of  microscopic activity present - atoms are still jiggling around colliding and emitting and absorbing radiation- but this happens in a purely random fashion , there is no cooperative behaviour involving large numbers of atoms . What is of interest to us is organised activity, which really means macroscopic activity.

For example convection currents currents taking place inside a bucket of cooling water involve the co-operative behaviour of billions upon billions of atoms in an orderly pattern of flow. Organised activity , there-fore , only occurs where there is disequilibrium.

there is much more in the book that will show you how energy works and why the universe will run out of usable energy.