Does the creation of life destroy E=mc2

Originally posted by hardbodyactiv
Ok...1st off I know nothing about physics, biology, botony, anthropology or any science!

what I have pondered on for a while now though is that since Life on this planet stated to flourish, surely this planet has become heavier than it was before Humans were as prolific as they currently are.

Say there are 5.5 billion people on the planet and on average they weigh 120lbs(55kgs). This = 660,000,000,000 lbs or 660,000,000 tons.

So, 150,000 years ago (probably wrong lol) or so when Man started to evolve and there was only a couple of thousand Humans, did the planet still weigh the same?

What about all the extra animals that we now have, if nothing else but due to breeding to feed us. What about the fields of grain

In which case where did all this extra matter (us) come from if Matter cannot be either created or destroyed?

Please don't flame me though cause I'm not looking for an argument, just info....

Peace Out

Actually you have a valid point...

You see a human being is created by just a sperm and egg and the nutrients that a baby gets through it's mother does not entirely account for the babies mass...

In other words our DNA can replicate itself and therefore life it's self has the ability to reproduce that is to say that more energy can come out of life than what goes into it.....

how can this be so??? doesn't that break fundamental physics that state you can never get more out of a system than what you put in???

Anyway.....

It would be a really fantastic experiment to measure the mass of the world and then subtract the mass of all life; this would give the true mass of the earth. Then in a hundred or so do the same thing and see if the total mass has gone up or down...

Personally I am inclined to think along the lines of the Quantum theory that states that the universe and everything is a wash with Virtual particles and these particles are in effect the unlimited possibilities of reality... Therefore Matter is what ever we make of it so long as there is a conscious mind at work....

Is that easy to follow?? prolly not... but there you go ;p

NeoN HaZe...

what you fail to see is that the human body is not a closed system. Things go in, things come out. It does not violate the law of conservation of mass because that only applies to a closed system.

Originally posted by ZetaGundam007
what you fail to see is that the human body is not a closed system. Things go in, things come out. It does not violate the law of conservation of mass because that only applies to a closed system.

There's your answer right there. The earth can be treated as a closed system, and thus nothing is created or destroyed.

Originally posted by Amorymeltzer

Originally posted by ZetaGundam007
what you fail to see is that the human body is not a closed system. Things go in, things come out. It does not violate the law of conservation of mass because that only applies to a closed system.

There's your answer right there. The earth can be treated as a closed system, and thus nothing is created or destroyed.

Well actually I fear the earth cannot be considered a closed system as there are literally tons and tons of space dust sprinkling all over the earth all year round...

Well, it all depends how precise you are being. Of course the earth isn't a closed system, nothing is except the universe, and even that is very likely not a closed system. However, I said the earth can be treated as a closed system. That is, you can assume the change is negligable, as it is, to think about things like this.

what i've always wanted to know is where matter and energy came from in the first place-- how was the very first matter introduced into the universe, and what does the law of conservation have to say about it?

Originally posted by kinglizard
But all life comes from the earth…literally. Humans and animals are what, 99% water, this water came from the earth. Same thing goes for the other 1%. In other words nothing has been added to the earth that wasn’t already there in the first place. It's just taken on a different form.
[edit on 22-3-2005 by kinglizard]

Exactly, you cannot have something from nothing. So far we have not been able to convert energy into matter(fully) & vice versa ( atomic bomb = .01% of mass converted into energy)

i agree totally kinglizard.

[edit on 24/3/05 by ivanglam]

Originally posted by hardbodyactiv
surely this planet has become heavier than it was before Humans were as prolific as they currently are.

Huh? Why?

So, 150,000 years ago (probably wrong lol) or so when Man started to evolve and there was only a couple of thousand Humans, did the planet still weigh the same?

I'd say so, yes. All these new people are made up of the crap and flesh of a bunch of other stuff.

What about the fields of grain

Even if there was an increase, it'd be pretty neglible. the 'biosphere' is practically non existant compared to the crust, the mantle, or the inner core of the planet.

In which case where did all this extra matter (us) come from if Matter cannot be either created or destroyed?

Rocks. The carbon comes from rocks. There's a buttload of it in the planet, and its continually cycled.

terapin
and the planet Earth all have about the same ratio of water to solids

The surface area of the earth is generally 75percent water. The earth as a whole only has a tiny tiny proportion of water.

hardbodyactiv
although I must admit that much of this is over my head

Think of it like this. People are made from mud (obviously they're not, but close enough if you want to get into it). So you have this planet, earth. Its really big. Really big. The illustration I've been given is that, if the earth was shrunk down to the proportions of an apple, then the crust, which is the outmost rocky layer of the earth, the stuff that entire continents, seafloors, and tectonic plates are made out of, would be thinner than the skin of the apple. The crust is so tremendously thick tho, that man hasn't even been able to drill thru it.
If the rocky portion of the earth is called the lithosphere, and the gases that cling to the planet make up the atmosphere, then the organisms, the tiny things (whether they're bacteria or whales) that live between it are the biosphere.
So mud people make up the biosphere. They make other mud people by moulding mud into people. They started off in thousands. Now there are 6 billion of them or so. They're all made up of mud.
Has the planet gotten heavier? No. Has a significant portion of the mud that can be used to make people been used up? No. Has even a noticible amount of the mud been used up? Nope, not at all.
Humans are made up of mud. The planet earth is made up of a bunch of crap from the universe. It clumped together to make the earth. The really heavy crap, like iron, literally sunk to the 'bottom', the center of the earth. The light stuff, like carbon, stayed where it was. clumps of carbon and other chemicals are called 'rocks'. When you expose rocks to the gases in air, you get chemical reaction, and when you expose it to water, you get other chemical reacions, and when stuff starts growing on it, you get more chemical reactions. A bunch of these reactions 'free up' carbon and other elements. Thats the mud that people and everything thats alive is made from. When ya poo, some of it goes back, but the biosphere, its so efficient at getting carbon, that there's enough crap to eat all the crap and turn it back into other crap. That crap rolls up the food chain to people, and is used to make more people, who proceed to crap out more crap. Thus, the circle of life.

ZetaGundam007
Things go in, things come out

Indeed. During a person's lifetime, their entire body is 'replaced'. Your bones, for example, have cells that make new bone. They don't only make it when you are growing, they allways make it. They also simultaneously have cells that destroy bone. And they are all supplied and serviced by various vessels. Its like a full bottle of water that has an equal amount of water pouring in as is, say, pouring out of a hole in the bottom. over time, all the molecules of water have been changed, but its never not a full bottle of water.

ivanglam
So far we ahve been able to convert energy into matter(fully)

I don't understand. When have, say, nuclear explosions been played out in reverse and created substance? I'd think that if this ever happened it was in a collider of some sort, but I am unfamiliar with what you are talking about.

sorry my bad Nygdan, it was suppose to be HAVENT.

[edit on 24/3/05 by ivanglam]

Ha ha! Good. I was pretty danged surpised for a bit. 'How the hell did i miss that' i was thinkin'

Originally posted by Odd
what i've always wanted to know is where matter and energy came from in the first place-- how was the very first matter introduced into the universe, and what does the law of conservation have to say about it?

If You read my first post on THIS thread I explain it. Here it is below

Originally posted by his gloriousness Amorymeltzer
In the beginning there was no beginning. There wasn't anything, there wasn't anywhere for anything to exist in.

Quantum fluctuation creates random fluctuation in energy, as long as you pay it back when you're done (so the net total change is 0). This happens, a particle is created, as well as its antiparticle, they anihilate themselves, pay back the energy, and nothing happens.

Roughly 1/1,000,000,000 times, a particle called a Higgs Boson might be created. A Higgs Boson has a Higgs Field, which can change randomly. We currently don't know what a Higgs is or what its field is, except that it has one. IF a Higgs Boson was created, and its field fluctuated enough, it could build to a point where it would "Explode" (read: create) all of existance upon our beautiful 4 (read: 11) dimensions.

Technically, through this scenario, universe could be popping up all around us, all the time, but there are an infinite number of dimensions to chose from, so the odds of us ever interacting are in the vicinity of ZERO.

[edit on 3/25/2005 by Amorymeltzer]

ok....back from a month's holiday and reviewing all my threads...

Good 2 see plenty of information and a little lively debate emerging on this 1...

Several posters have mentioned open and closed systems.

I hope i'm correct in this assumption:

The human reproductive system is an open system as are all other mammals (nutrients in via umbilical cord, waste out via blood). Since most women are unaware that they're pregnant until they miss their first period (even though there are still some who are unaware that they're pregnant until *pop*) and according to the post by Neon Haze:

You see a human being is created by just a sperm and egg and the nutrients that a baby gets through it's mother does not entirely account for the babies mass...

In other words our DNA can replicate itself and therefore life it's self has the ability to reproduce that is to say that more energy can come out of life than what goes into it.....

how can this be so??? doesn't that break fundamental physics that state you can never get more out of a system than what you put in???

this means that life can actually produce a greater mass than when it was first created. At sum point during pregnancy, mammals will start to ingest more nutrients to feed the growing foetus, but for women this surely takes several months; not sure about other mammalian species who‘s evolutionary process has perhaps been slightly more basic than ours and may just “sense“ pregnancy so increase intake immediately, even if only ever so slightly.

During this time that human foetus is growing at a very fast rate, as explained by Neon Haze, due to DNA replication. (thanks 4 this “missing link“ pal)

So if we take in isolation the point that most mammals start to increase their nutrient intake...has the developing foetus "created" more matter than existed in the Universe b4 pregnancy.....making the Earth heavier!...multiplied by the amount of mammals pregnant all @ the same time as an ongoing evolution of mammalian species...whether contrived as in farmed or freely produced as a natural consequence of sex.

Surely to conserve this matter, female mammals would have to actually LOSE sum weight from their own bodies, even if it was only a minute quantity…???

Also regarding closed reproductive systems such as animals hatched from eggs. Do the hatched newborn animals weigh exactly the same as the non-porous egg did when laid? If so then fine. Conservation of Matter...if not...then more matter "created" to add to the overall increase in weight of the planet.

Or is this just BS lol.

By the way: don't bother flaming me coz i'm only looking for information and based upon that information gathered and offered, am offering an opinion.

Peace Out

We must remember that even Life forms are made up of atoms. Perhaps that is how Life started, by a special arrangement of atoms brought about by the Sun and other factors, remember that we take in food(mass) to increase in Mass.

Siddharth.A

Hardbodyactiv:

Every single bit of mass for the fetus comes from ingested food and previous materials in the female body, right down to the DNAse that replicates the strands every so often. Hence the phrase "You're eating for two now."