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It’s now understood that all particles have an equivalent antimatter particle with opposite charge and quantum spin – although some are their own antiparticle. However hardly any antimatter is seen in the observable universe, and why there should be vastly much more normal matter is one of the great unsolved problems in physics.
Creation and destruction
It was once thought that matter could neither be created nor destroyed, but we now know that energy and mass are interchangeable. When a particle collides with its antiparticle the two annihilate each other, with their mass being entirely converted into energy.
All the particle accelerator in the world are continuously (when they are operating) converting kinetic energy into matter. For example, when two protons collide at the LHC the kinetic energy of the protons is converted in to tens to hundreds of particles (matter) which the experimenters then try to characterize with their detectors. Most of these particles are very short-lived and either decay into multiple less massive particles or they may interact with the detector material and create even more particles. However there will always be a significant number of electrons, protons, positrons and antiprotons (that are all stable) as the eventual result of the collision. The positrons and antiprotons will eventually annihilate with electrons and protons but in principle if they could be kept separate from ordinary matter they would all last forever. So the original two protons can create multiple protons and electrons (and their antiparticles) and this additional matter is made from the kinetic energy of the original protons.
Death (excluding spectacular deaths) isn’t instantaneous. In fact, what with medical science, it’s become more and more difficult to even define when people are dead. Time was you could define death as being a lack of heart beat, but people have come back from worse (by that metric, Dick Cheney has been dead for a while). Death is more of a break-down of the whole system, as opposed to a sudden event. The heart stops doing whatever hearts do when they’re not loving, oxygen and nutrients stop going where they’re needed, and in short order the nerve cells in the body lose the wherewithal to pump ions. Like batteries that are no longer being recharged, they run down. Nothing special. Like every kind of energy, whether electrical, kinetic, sonic, or sports fever, the electrical potential in the body eventually becomes heat energy (it’s an entropy thing).
We are made of Energy, not Matter
The new science also accepts that the universe, including us, is made up of energy, not matter. This is not actually new – it was posited by Socrates in Europe way back when, and by the ancient rishis in India thousands of years before that.
Socrates said that energy, or soul, is separate from matter, and that the universe is made of energy – pure energy which was there before man and other material things like the earth came along.
Quantum physics says that as you go deeper and deeper into the workings of the atom, you see that there is nothing there – just energy waves. It says an atom is actually an invisible force field, a kind of miniature tornado, which emits waves of electrical energy.
originally posted by: Thurisaz
Perhaps this is the basis of eternal life? We are energy that has become matter, perhaps death is anti matter? Then our energy becomes something else?