Evolution of Freedom
Part III: Positive Liberty - Chapter 26
Energy/matter
Out of nothingness came everything: space, time, energy and matter. In the Big Bang, the whole universe unfolded from a hot, extremely dense point. To this day, the explosion-like expansion continues as the universe gets larger by the second. By calculating the trajectories backward, we can infer the age of the universe: 13.8 billion years.
At first, the universe was pure radiating energy governed by a singular super-force. As the universe expanded and cooled down, 17 elementary particles emerged, and the superforce separated into the four fundamental forces of nature: gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetism. Elementary particles formed protons and neutrons that coalesced into nuclei. Combined with an electron, they formed the first chemical elements in the universe: helium and hydrogen.
Matter was born: the essential unit of the universe.
With the help of gravity, clouds of helium and hydrogen formed larger and larger clusters, the seeds of future galaxies. In the center of these swirling clouds, stars would form. Inside these stars, helium and hydrogen would fuse into heavier elements, filling out most of the periodic table. Those elements would then become the building blocks for our physical universe and life itself.
Everything we see around us is matter: air, water, earth, plants, animals, buildings and our own bodies. Matter is something that has both mass and volume, and it can take four different forms: solid, liquid, gas and plasma. All matter is highly concentrated energy.
Light, the thing that makes us see all the matter around us, is not matter, as it lacks mass. Any particle without mass travels at the speed of light.
In 1905, Albert Einstein put forth his famous equation E=MC², which established the mass-energy equivalence. He revealed the formula by which we can calculate how much energy a given mass contains. And as matter is made out of energy, and since we derive our energy from matter in the form of food, oil, uranium-235 etc., we can combine them under one term: energy/matter.
Physicists don’t have an all-encompassing explanation of what energy is, because there are so many different forms of it. From a layperson’s perspective it appears that energy is stored in and released from the nuclear and molecular bonds that hold matter together.
To understand how much energy matter contains, we can look at nuclear fission, a reaction that releases a massive amount of energy when an atom is split. By splitting the atoms in only 1 gram of refined uranium-235, we can power a house for up to five years with a loss of only a fraction of its mass. For anybody who has ever relied on firewood to keep warm for a night, this concentration of energy is difficult to comprehend. The bonds that hold atoms together clearly contain more energy than molecular bonds.
The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed: it can only be transformed from one state to another. This means that all the energy in the universe already exists. We can observe how the law of conservation of energy works when we follow how the energy emitted by the Sun flows and transforms from one state to another in our ecosystem.
The origin of the Sun’s energy is a nuclear fusion reaction happening at its core. Every second, 600 million tons of hydrogen fuses into 596 million tons of helium. As this happens, four million tons of matter transforms into pure energy. This process is responsible for the Sun’s light and heat. The Sun’s energy travels to Earth in the form of photons, the smallest unit of energy that can be transported. Traveling at the speed of 299,792,458 meters per second, it takes a photon little more than eight minutes to reach Earth.
For the flow of the Sun’s energy to continue on our planet, we have to rely on living organisms. Due to an evolutionary step in complexity, a plant cell learned to convert the raw electromagnetic energy contained in photons into chemical energy. Plants essentially learned to eat sunlight in a process called photosynthesis. Looking at plant leaves, we can imagine them as little tongues sticking out, trying to catch as much food as possible.
During photosynthesis, plants first convert carbon dioxide and water into ATP and then into carbohydrates. ATP is the basic energy source of all life. It is like a small battery that is quickly used up by the cell. Without ATP, life as we know it would not exist.
In addition, photosynthesis releases the oxygen (O) stored in both water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2), creating the planet’s livable atmosphere, which makes further life possible on Earth. Life thus creates and maintains the very conditions that make life possible in the first place.
The Sun’s energy flows throughout our ecosystem along the food chain. Organisms capture energy by creating new chemical bonds in the form of sugars, fats and proteins. When these bonds are broken down by the digestive process, the consumer’s body captures this energy. With this energy, a plant, an animal or the human body can retain its homeostasis or equilibrium and temporarily resist the corrosive effects of entropy trying to tear everything apart.
Whenever energy transforms from one state to another, it encounters the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that part of the energy is lost to entropy. This means that when we try to convert, for example, the energy stored in gasoline to mechanical work to power our car’s pistons, part of the energy is lost in the burning process as heat and light that can’t be captured by the car’s engine.
Similarly, when herbivores consume plants, the consumer can capture only 10 percent of the producer’s energy in its own tissue, as the rest is converted to heat that keeps the animal warm. When the mitochondria in our cells break down carbohydrates back into usable ATP, the process resembles that of burning wood in a fire.
When a carnivore eats an herbivore, it can also store only 10 percent of its energy. This means that only 1 percent of the plant’s energy transfers to the carnivore. When the Sun’s energy reaches the food chain’s final trophic level–the apex predators–upon their death, decomposers like fungi capture and reuse the energy contained in them.
This is how energy flows through our ecosystem.
Life and its self-repairing processes constantly build back up what keeps falling apart. To repair themselves, living organisms need a steady supply of energy. Our ecosystem is engaged in constant competition to capture the energy that originates from the Sun. All living things are like batteries full of energy that need to snap up smaller batteries in their quest to keep up their charge. Our bodies and every move we make are made possible by the energy contained in ATP, which was once pure sunlight.
The Sun’s energy is the life force that animates our planet. In his 1900 article for the Century Illustrated Magazine, Nicola Tesla wrote:
At first, the universe was pure radiating energy governed by a singular super-force. As the universe expanded and cooled down, 17 elementary particles emerged, and the superforce separated into the four fundamental forces of nature: gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetism. Elementary particles formed protons and neutrons that coalesced into nuclei. Combined with an electron, they formed the first chemical elements in the universe: helium and hydrogen.
Matter was born: the essential unit of the universe.
With the help of gravity, clouds of helium and hydrogen formed larger and larger clusters, the seeds of future galaxies. In the center of these swirling clouds, stars would form. Inside these stars, helium and hydrogen would fuse into heavier elements, filling out most of the periodic table. Those elements would then become the building blocks for our physical universe and life itself.
Everything we see around us is matter: air, water, earth, plants, animals, buildings and our own bodies. Matter is something that has both mass and volume, and it can take four different forms: solid, liquid, gas and plasma. All matter is highly concentrated energy.
Light, the thing that makes us see all the matter around us, is not matter, as it lacks mass. Any particle without mass travels at the speed of light.
In 1905, Albert Einstein put forth his famous equation E=MC², which established the mass-energy equivalence. He revealed the formula by which we can calculate how much energy a given mass contains. And as matter is made out of energy, and since we derive our energy from matter in the form of food, oil, uranium-235 etc., we can combine them under one term: energy/matter.
Physicists don’t have an all-encompassing explanation of what energy is, because there are so many different forms of it. From a layperson’s perspective it appears that energy is stored in and released from the nuclear and molecular bonds that hold matter together.
To understand how much energy matter contains, we can look at nuclear fission, a reaction that releases a massive amount of energy when an atom is split. By splitting the atoms in only 1 gram of refined uranium-235, we can power a house for up to five years with a loss of only a fraction of its mass. For anybody who has ever relied on firewood to keep warm for a night, this concentration of energy is difficult to comprehend. The bonds that hold atoms together clearly contain more energy than molecular bonds.
The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed: it can only be transformed from one state to another. This means that all the energy in the universe already exists. We can observe how the law of conservation of energy works when we follow how the energy emitted by the Sun flows and transforms from one state to another in our ecosystem.
The origin of the Sun’s energy is a nuclear fusion reaction happening at its core. Every second, 600 million tons of hydrogen fuses into 596 million tons of helium. As this happens, four million tons of matter transforms into pure energy. This process is responsible for the Sun’s light and heat. The Sun’s energy travels to Earth in the form of photons, the smallest unit of energy that can be transported. Traveling at the speed of 299,792,458 meters per second, it takes a photon little more than eight minutes to reach Earth.
For the flow of the Sun’s energy to continue on our planet, we have to rely on living organisms. Due to an evolutionary step in complexity, a plant cell learned to convert the raw electromagnetic energy contained in photons into chemical energy. Plants essentially learned to eat sunlight in a process called photosynthesis. Looking at plant leaves, we can imagine them as little tongues sticking out, trying to catch as much food as possible.
During photosynthesis, plants first convert carbon dioxide and water into ATP and then into carbohydrates. ATP is the basic energy source of all life. It is like a small battery that is quickly used up by the cell. Without ATP, life as we know it would not exist.
In addition, photosynthesis releases the oxygen (O) stored in both water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2), creating the planet’s livable atmosphere, which makes further life possible on Earth. Life thus creates and maintains the very conditions that make life possible in the first place.
The Sun’s energy flows throughout our ecosystem along the food chain. Organisms capture energy by creating new chemical bonds in the form of sugars, fats and proteins. When these bonds are broken down by the digestive process, the consumer’s body captures this energy. With this energy, a plant, an animal or the human body can retain its homeostasis or equilibrium and temporarily resist the corrosive effects of entropy trying to tear everything apart.
Whenever energy transforms from one state to another, it encounters the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that part of the energy is lost to entropy. This means that when we try to convert, for example, the energy stored in gasoline to mechanical work to power our car’s pistons, part of the energy is lost in the burning process as heat and light that can’t be captured by the car’s engine.
Similarly, when herbivores consume plants, the consumer can capture only 10 percent of the producer’s energy in its own tissue, as the rest is converted to heat that keeps the animal warm. When the mitochondria in our cells break down carbohydrates back into usable ATP, the process resembles that of burning wood in a fire.
When a carnivore eats an herbivore, it can also store only 10 percent of its energy. This means that only 1 percent of the plant’s energy transfers to the carnivore. When the Sun’s energy reaches the food chain’s final trophic level–the apex predators–upon their death, decomposers like fungi capture and reuse the energy contained in them.
This is how energy flows through our ecosystem.
Life and its self-repairing processes constantly build back up what keeps falling apart. To repair themselves, living organisms need a steady supply of energy. Our ecosystem is engaged in constant competition to capture the energy that originates from the Sun. All living things are like batteries full of energy that need to snap up smaller batteries in their quest to keep up their charge. Our bodies and every move we make are made possible by the energy contained in ATP, which was once pure sunlight.
The Sun’s energy is the life force that animates our planet. In his 1900 article for the Century Illustrated Magazine, Nicola Tesla wrote:
First let us ask: Whence comes all the motive power? What is the spring that drives all? We see the ocean rise and fall, the rivers flow, the wind, rain, hail, and snow beat on our windows, the trains and steamers come and go; we hear the rattling noise of carriages, the voices from the street; we feel, smell, and taste; and we think of all this. And all this movement, from the surging of the mighty ocean to that subtle movement concerned in our thought, has but one common cause. All this energy emanates from one single center, one single source–the Sun. The Sun is the spring that drives all. The Sun maintains all human life and supplies all human energy.
While new energy sources like nuclear and geothermal, and processes like chemosynthesis, undermine this categorical statement, the fact remains that it is the Sun’s energy that creates the life we see all around us. All human phenomena are ultimately manifestations of solar energy. No matter what religion you believe in–or don’t believe in–it is evident that without the Sun, we would simply not exist. From the perspective of natural science, the sun is our “God.” We all share the same creator.
Our political system creates the rules by which we capture, transform and redirect the energy/matter around us. The goods and services we depend on are tangible manifestations of energy/matter; it is our economy’s purpose to allocate it as effectively as possible. Whatever political and economic systems we conceive of, the understanding of life and how energy/matter flows through our society needs to be at its foundation.
Our political system creates the rules by which we capture, transform and redirect the energy/matter around us. The goods and services we depend on are tangible manifestations of energy/matter; it is our economy’s purpose to allocate it as effectively as possible. Whatever political and economic systems we conceive of, the understanding of life and how energy/matter flows through our society needs to be at its foundation.
