Tim Cook wrote:
> Otherwise we'd just call everything 'energy'. 

Those who understand how it works *do* call everything "energy". Before 
people understood what "energy" is, they called different aspects of the 
same thing "energy".  Like asking whether the elephant is a rope, or a 
tree, or a wall.

People used to think width != height != length != duration, too, but 
that isn't right either, and they're all aspects of the same thing. 
That's why they call it "spacetime" instead of "space" and "time".

Asking "can mass be converted to different kinds of energy" is like 
asking "can different kinds of distances be converted to other kinds of 
distances?"

>  Energy is the set of all numbers, mass is the set of all positive 
> integers, light is the set of all negative primes, and so forth. 

No. That's what the = sign means. Heat energy is stored as mass. Nuclear 
energy is stored as mass. Kinetic energy is stored as mass. Energy is 
mass, mass is energy. All mass is energy, all energy is mass. There 
isn't some energy-that-is-mass and some energy-that-isn't-mass and you 
can convert between them, because then energy wouldn't be conserved in a 
closed system, and an experiment you do here would have different 
results than an experiment you do there.

It's like saying "how do I convert my word-processor into a number 
cruncher?"  You rearrange the patterns of bits. But there's no separate 
word processor or number cruncher. It's the same parts (i.e., electrons) 
in different places.

Put it this way: Do you believe in the conservation of energy? That 
energy cannot be created or destroyed in a closed system? If so, where 
does the extra mass come from when you accelerate something close to 
relativistic speeds? Where does the energy you used to lift a brick out 
of a gravity field go? (I.e., what *is* "potential energy" beyond just 
words?)

There's no such thing as "energy" beyond a mathematical concept. The 
different kinds of energy are different ways of measuring the same 
thing. They are ways of calculating patterns of mass.

In exactly the same way, infrared light is ultraviolet light is gamma 
radiation is radio waves. Can you convert infrared light to ultraviolet 
light? Sure. You don't even have to do anything to the light. Just start 
moving real fast towards the source of the light. They are *identical*, 
and asking whether it's possible to convert photons to light waves is 
unanswerable, because they really are in every respect the same thing 
looked at with two different mathematical mechanisms.

Can you explain what kinetic energy *is*? Can you explain why an object 
gains mass as it leaves a gravitational field, or why it seems heavier 
to an observer moving relative to it compared to an observer stationary 
with respect to it? Can you explain where the kinetic energy of a 
falling brick comes from if it started at rest in a gravity field?

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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