Does gravity effect pure energy?

If you turn matter into pure energy such as antimatter and matter coming together, does gravity still effect the energy? Would a conversion of matter to energy be pushed toward earths core just like the original matter would be?

Alternatively does energy produce gravity? If you could constantly produce a ball of energy in front of a space craft would it be pulled toward it?

a reply to: Xeven

If I'm not mistaken, mass is required to generate or influence gravity, not just energy. So pulling a spaceship with a "ball of energy" wouldn't work.

a reply to: Xeven

Mass produces a gravitational field. Your other questions are kinda jingle-jangled into each other and don't really make sense. I'm not sure what "pure" energy is, opposed "impure" energy?

a reply to: boncho


Energy - a unit of measure

The capacity or power to do work, such as the capacity to move an object (of a given mass) by the application of force. Energy can exist in a variety of forms, such as electrical, mechanical, chemical, thermal, or nuclear, and can be transformed from one form to another. It is measured by the amount of work done, usually in joules or watts.

a reply to: Xeven

What's the difference between pure and "impure" energy?

Is that like, energy that lost it's virginity before marriage?

a reply to: intrptr

If I recall correctly, isn't gravity linked to the higgs-boson? Or, is said linkage still inconclusive?

isn't light "pure" energy, and doesn't light get consumed by a black hole.

originally posted by: ShadowChatter
a reply to: boncho


Energy - a unit of measure

The capacity or power to do work, such as the capacity to move an object (of a given mass) by the application of force. Energy can exist in a variety of forms, such as electrical, mechanical, chemical, thermal, or nuclear, and can be transformed from one form to another. It is measured by the amount of work done, usually in joules or watts.

I know what energy is. My point was the OPs understanding of it. Or do you think "pure energy such as matter and antimatter coming together" is a good way to convey the question he is asking?

The simplest answer to his question I guess would be that the explosion caused would release kinetic energy which would be moving in all directions mostly unaffected by gravity***, yet, light from the explosion would be bend over time***, it all kind of depends where this explosion took place in relation to the gravitational field, how big the explosion is and how big the field is, along with a few other variables I can think of, etc, etc.

To put it simply however, the OP needs clarity in the questions he's asking.

the answer is yes. furthermore energy has a mass equivalent gravity effect on it's own.

if space is curved, which is how relativity treats gravity in the first place, gravity bends light. to your question an antimatter explosion produces energy in the form of gamma rays which are carried by high energy photons. since gravity bends light (event horizoms, lensing effects, etc...) gravity does effect energy from antimatter annihilations.

there are some "ghost" particles produced in antimatter reactions too. Neutral pi mesons. these particles should also be effected by gravity but i have never heard this specifically pointed out. the reason they should be effected by gravity is that space is a medium and anything that travels through space has to follow the curvature of the space it travels through. nothing every really travels in a straight line as a consequence.

pi mesons are not stable and degenerate into other more tangible particles within a tiny fraction of a second. however due to thier relativisitic speed they persist longer than they should. they can travel about 1.7 kilometers as a massless neutral non interacting particle. this issue gives antimatter engineers yet another issue with designing an antimatter powered space ship.

Matter and Energy are supposed to be interchangeable. I was just wondering if when matter that has gravity is converted to energy does that energy still have gravity and is it still effected by other matter.

By pure I mean all the matter is now energy.

Gravity requires mass, enough to pull everything closer together, the larger the mass the stronger the gravity. The sun has so much mass that it essentially tightens atoms to a point where they become unstable, releasing massive amounts of energy.
All energy needs a source of 'ignition' whether it be friction, a push, etc. and once that energy is released it's gone, used up, shot out to somewhere in the universe and 'caught' by something else, which is pretty much recycled, for example, plants catching photons from light.

From my understanding is that energy is used over and over unless it's caught in say a black hole, and well I am not sure what happens in there other than it's massive amounts of gravity. Who knows, maybe black holes are factories of taking pure energy and making it 'whole' again.

a reply to: Xeven

A good question and not that easily answered, consider that the medium in which the energy exits is space-time and gravity effect's space-time then yes but in fact is it effecting the energy or merely the medium within which it is located?.

Are there dimension's beyond the influence of gravity and in those dimensions it would be a reasonably observation that there it is no longer effected by gravity.

Light has nearly no mass and in theoretical term's it is regarded as having no mass but a black hole can trap it, it is obvious that since all energy is trapped by a black hole except some that escaped from near the event horizon (so just outside the black hole but at the point most object's and even energy undergoe a process called spaghetification), this mean's that at least were gravitation is present is does effect energy, weather directly or more likey indirectly is the real question (though indirectly is a proven point at least theoretically speaking and remember theoretical proof is merely supporting data that is taken as fact).

For me the idea of Membranes in superspace colliding and interacting to produce our universe or at least the natural rules and nature of our dimension of existance is an intriguing one and one theory is that gravity is actually an external force so it is weaker than electromagnetic attraction for instance as can be proven by using a small magnet to life a large piece of metal in opposition to the force of gravity.

Now imagine one hypothesis that gravity is actually at a ambient saturation of one to one throughout even empty space and borrowing from string theory the idea that matter is a standing wave form at right angles to the percieved flow of time or a tangle in this string, were matter is denser therefore there is more of the string compressed into less volume and so the ambient gravity is for the space increased over the one to one ration and is so lensed or saturates the area of the high density string material at a far higher level in proportion to it's mass or amount of string present, this thows out a few problems such as why does space not clump together and from new matter then?.
Well what if there are more than one string (membrane) and empty space is formed from one further out in superspace than the one that mass and energy are formed from, there may be many more string's or membranes than this but it is interesting to hypothesize that like whirl pool's merge that the same effect may be what is happening in space with mass attracted to mass and forming larger and more dense accumulations of matter and gravity well's.
Energy may be an interaction that is opposed to gravity but as there is no sign it can cancel gravity out it therefore can not be opposed and must be effected by gravity.

Conservation of energy
law of conservation of energy states that Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but can change form,
for instance chemical energy can be converted to kinetic energy in the explosion of a stick of dynamite.


Conservation of mass

the mass of the system must remain constant over time, as system mass cannot change quantity if it is not added or removed.


In special relativity, mass is not converted to energy, since mass and energy cannot be destroyed, and energy in all of its forms always retains its equivalent amount of mass throughout any transformation to a different type of energy within a system

originally posted by: Not Authorized
a reply to: intrptr

If I recall correctly, isn't gravity linked to the higgs-boson? Or, is said linkage still inconclusive?

My personal opinion would be unscientific.

But I don't know what the current science "wave front" is contending about things being made of waves or particles, or waves of particles…

I read something quite a long time ago that suggested energy had mass. It was based on a test with a coil spring and an extremely sensitive scale. When relaxes the spring was weighed with two clamps sitting next to it. Then the clamps were used to compress the spring. The total weight was greater than the sum total of the spring and clamps alone. The only answer was the potential energy of the compressed spring had mass. Strange, but interesting...

a reply to: Xeven

Depends on what and where the energy is.

a reply to: intrptr

They are both right. Double Slit experiment. Hehe.

a reply to: Xeven

Antimatter and matter coming together annihilates each, it doesn't produce jack all. As far as I know there is no such thing as pure energy except arguably kinetic energy which is purely conceptual. Even plasma which is the most energetic state of matter is really just superheated ionized particles. Heat is light. Magnetic fields are probably propagated by electron motion. Gravity is probably a curvature of space-time. There is no ethereal energy somewhere out in the physical universe just hanging around disembodied.

Also, we know for sure that gravity effects light, which is theoretically massless, so if it does that, then I'm assuming that all things are effected by gravity. Would enough photons gathered together have a gravitational pull? I doubt it. 0+0+0+0 ad nauseum still equals zero and mass seems to be the thing that propagates gravitational effects.

originally posted by: Nechash
a reply to: Xeven

Antimatter and matter coming together annihilates each, it doesn't produce jack all. As far as I know there is no such thing as pure energy except arguably kinetic energy which is purely conceptual. Even plasma which is the most energetic state of matter is really just superheated ionized particles. Heat is light. Magnetic fields are probably propagated by electron motion. Gravity is probably a curvature of space-time. There is no ethereal energy somewhere out in the physical universe just hanging around disembodied.

Also, we know for sure that gravity effects light, which is theoretically massless, so if it does that, then I'm assuming that all things are effected by gravity. Would enough photons gathered together have a gravitational pull? I doubt it. 0+0+0+0 ad nauseum still equals zero and mass seems to be the thing that propagates gravitational effects.

You might want to double check some of the above.

Matter/antimatter annihilations produce tremendous amounts of high energy radiation such as gamma rays.