What is the mass of pure energy?

[ZooNamedGames]

A little while ago on Scott Manley's recent livestream, he discussed breaking the laws of physics by specific engines of very very advanced nature (I don't remember the specifics and I want to keep it vague as it isn't the topic at hand), so I got me wondering...

What is the mass of pure energy?

To clarify, I don't mean light, which is technically a byproduct of energy production. I know this is a difficult question as I've heard that the science behind how mass becomes energy and vice versa is in the detailed form, a bit unknown... or so I've heard.

So, anyone got an answer, theory, thought, or idea?

[Kryten]

E=mc^2, so m=E/c^2; and light is a form of energy.

[p1t1o]

40 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

To clarify, I don't mean light, which is technically a byproduct of energy production

No, that doesn't make any objective sense. What is it you imagine being created when light is produced as a byproduct?

 

Its pretty hard to define "pure energy", I think there is a semantic error occuring somewhere. If I punch someone, is that kinetic energy somehow "impure"?

There is no "base" form of energy, "energy" is just a word we give to a category of related phenomena.

 

But if you could somehow define a pure form of it, I cant imagine any answer being different to what Kryten said.

Edited September 16, 2016 by p1t1o

[ZooNamedGames]

2 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

No, that doesn't make any objective sense. What is it you imagine being created when light is produced as a byproduct?

 

Its pretty hard to define "pure energy", I think there is a semantic error occuring somewhere. If I punch someone, is that kinetic energy somehow "impure"?

There is no "base" form of energy, "energy" is just a word we give to a category of related phenomena.

 

But if you could somehow define a pure form of it, I cant imagine any answer being different to what Kryten said.

I mean what is energy. When I break matter down to the point that it can no longer exist as the most basic material form, what must be left is energy, due to conservation of matter, correct?

So what is energy's mass?

Edited September 16, 2016 by ZooNamedGames

[Wraith977]

22 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I mean what is energy. When I break matter down to the point that it can no longer exist as the most basic material form, what must be left is energy, due to conservation of matter, correct?

So what is energy's mass?

Technically matter is a state of energy, there is no such thing as "pure energy". What Scott was talking about was this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster I believe, in this case it is the mass of photons that are in question, not "energy".

Also If I'm understanding your idea of "breaking down matter" correctly, if you break down enough you get an EMP with a lot of light, a lot of heat and a lot of sound. It might look familiar...

Spoiler

 

Edited September 16, 2016 by Wraith977

[p1t1o]

3 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I mean what is energy. When I break matter down to the point that it can no longer exist as the most basic material form, what must be left is energy, due to conservation of matter, correct?

So what is energy's mass?

If you have its quantity in Joules, then you use E=mc^2, as in Krytens answer.

Or, if you know that the "breakdown" was 100% loss-free, then its just the same mass as the matter you started with.

Mass of 1 joule:

m = 1 / 300000000*300000000

1J = 1.11e-17kg

[PB666]

4 hours ago, Wraith977 said:

Technically matter is a state of energy, there is no such thing as "pure energy". What Scott was talking about was this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster I believe, in this case it is the mass of photons that are in question, not "energy".

Also If I'm understanding your idea of "breaking down matter" correctly, if you break down enough you get an EMP with a lot of light, a lot of heat and a lot of sound. It might look familiar...

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Quote

radio frequency (RF) resonant cavity thruster is a proposed type of electromagnetic thruster in which electromagnetic radiation is confined to a microwave cavity, and provides thrust to the cavity in a particular direction as the radiation reflects within the cavity. - from the wiki page

To point out the RF does not leave the cavity, but what it might be doing is establishing electron orbitals that exceed the dimensions of the cavity, that circulate around the thruster. The electrons then interact with matter outside the cavity via virtual particles (more classically realized as electrostatic repulsion between electron orbitals). There is no theoretical limit on the size of electron orbitals, they can be as big as the universe, and the lowest energy orbitals in graphene sheets are the area of the sheet, for any 4n+2 pi bonded material there is at least one orbital that includes all the pi bonds. This means that they may be effective at great distances, however, theory allows for alot of things that are not observed, and I don't think long range interactions will be the case, more like a range dropoff that is in the meter range (probably already diminishing) and completely lost in the 10-100 meter range.

THe problem here, on both sides is that you are allowing assumptions and preconceptions to lead the data, which is never good in science. The process is to test and retest under a variety of more and more stringent conditions until you have a set of limits that can be tweeked, prodded, altered, etc until one of these conditions demonstrates the physical nature of its bias.

 

 

[mikegarrison]

The is an excellent example of why some forum questions are difficult to answer. For instance, if I wrote "1+2=4, so how is it that 2+2 also equals 4?" You would see the problem right off. When the error is assumed in the premise of the question, it becomes difficult to actually answer the question.