The first law of thermodynamics - conservation of energy

Hi all, thank you for joining.

I have a question about the first law of thermodynamics. It's rather a simple question.

Am I right stating the first law of thermodynamics states energy cannot be created nor destroyed?

If so, we know there is energy in the universe, if energy cannot be created, how did energy occur in the first place?

This law instantly implies energy, although unable to be created always existed.

They say energy originated from the big bang, which was energy, but energy cannot be created so isn't this law contradicting itself on its own?

a reply to: Untun

I believe thermodynamics are a result of the constraints of physics As observed in this universe.

Prior to the existence of this universe the observed laws did not exist, arising as they did from the "big bang".

So it's: Bang - Laws - Universe.

Not: Laws - Bang - Universe.

a reply to: Mantiss2021

Ok, my question would be then if there wasn't any energy at all before the big bang.

a reply to: Untun

As to what "existed" before the big bang, there are only theories. No one knows, since no one was there to observe and there is nothing currently in existence that survived unchanged from the big bang.

The best we can do is deduce what might have existed (if that is even the proper term) just prior (again, "prior" is a relative term here, since it implies a hierarchy of Time, which could not have existed) to the bang.

"Energy" might have existed as nothing more than a roiling potentiality.

On the side,

The law states energy cannot be created nor destroyed so this naturally implies energy always existed, does it debunk the big bang theory?

If the universe did not come from another universe but from something different where the big bang originated from was their really nothing in the beginning?

a reply to: Mantiss2021

We posted simultaneously, I did not see your post before my post following yours when I posted it.

a reply to: Untun

If time was a thing.

Imagine an object in motion that has always been in motion has been travelling forever in the ocean of space. At some point all of those things that were traveling through space were super condensed, kind of like how I crush my beer cans when I am done with them, they get really really small. Those things at the time was everything in the universe that always has been and always will be in existance, every atom, every lepton, everything was condensed in Brothermans smashed beer can...
One day some # happened and that beer can just imploded or exploded or something like that and the underlying result was the contents of that condensed mass was rapidly tossed throughout the vacuum of space, those things were no more and no less of the contents of everything that had ever been. It didn't create or not create but what it did do was transform as its expansion kept growing in speed and mass.
(brothermans warped explaination of kinetic/ potential energy and all the BS)

Energy was not created nor destroyed but was transformed through the process of time and change.

I need a beer now, here, here's one for you too

a reply to: Untun

The Big Bang theorises the origin of the material universe as we know it, in the reality of the infinite there are no beginnings or endings, just changes.

a reply to: surfer_soul

Mantis2021 made an interesting point saying the first law, as far as we know, is only applied in our current universe and therefore not certainly before the big bang.

I came to think though, if there was no energy before the big bang, energy can occur from no energy and once it occured it cannot be destroyed anymore (according to the first law of thermodynamics we currently have)

Matter/energy cannot be created and/or destroyed .
Only transformed .

If so, we know there is energy in the universe, if energy cannot be created, how did energy occur in the first place?

Quarks and dark energy/mass .

originally posted by: Gothmog

If so, we know there is energy in the universe, if energy cannot be created, how did energy occur in the first place?

Quarks and dark energy/mass .

What about it?

originally posted by: Untun

originally posted by: Gothmog

If so, we know there is energy in the universe, if energy cannot be created, how did energy occur in the first place?

Quarks and dark energy/mass .

What about it?

The question was asked.
I answered .

a reply to: Gothmog

I asked how energy did occur and you like said from dark energy but I guess that's also energy so the question remains, how did energy occur?

a reply to: Untun

So you are looking for the original source of energy?
which is also the original source of 'all that exists'...

Guess that's the point where science meets metaphysics,
let me know if you ever find an answer to that one

a reply to: Untun

energy wasn't created, its always been there in some form.

a reply to: Gothmog

There is no dark energy, maybe it's just electromagnetic radiation so far off the spectrum beyond the gamma that it has become uniform (why we can't detect it)

Light is shining through that void otherwise we wouldn't even know it was there, you wouldn't (see) that dark matter.

Dark is only in reference to not knowing what it is yet, we're in the dark so to say, ignorant of it at the moment.

imo dark matter is just spacetime, the mass of a galaxy itself has spacetime curved in on itself enough to keep the galaxies from flying apart.

Just like we know that air is a colorless, odorless, invisible gas... we want to know what empty space (spacetime) is too. It's like we are going full circle looking for the aether again.

en.m.wikipedia.org...

I love how the wording has been transformed and redefined, now apparently there's is a distinction between the classical aether and the modern quest to pursue it again.

Scrutinize the empty space and your tool to do this is math, which at its foundation you will find that it is broken, when you scrutinize math itself.

Math itself is illogical maybe that's why so many people aren't good at it, it works against the rational mind and human nature... but we discover things using this tool and that means progress. That process is meant to be ongoing not definitive.

It only takes the first 700 pages in the Principia Mathematica to come to a conclusion that 1 + 1 = 2 and still even that requires further substantiation.

originally posted by: namehere
a reply to: Untun

energy wasn't created, its always been there in some form.

That's what the first law of thermodynamics stands for.

a reply to: Untun

There's also the question of the destruction of it too... enter Stephen Hawking

1 + 1 doesn't always equal 2 when we observe merging bodies. One would think two merging masses would add their mass together to make double the mass.

In fact it does not, it equals less than 2... when 2 black holes merge there is a net loss of approx (I believe it is) 30%

It's like weighing two 10lb objects and your scale reports 14lbs, but when you weigh them individually your scale says each object is 10lbs.

1 + 1 = 1.4

a reply to: Untun

Short of typing 10000 words, there isn't a good explanation that can be housed on ATS. You should google up "vacuum energy" so you can understand the energy potential of spacetime itself. It is immense.

The answer is , on a universe scale the first law of thermodynamics does not seem to fit. The Cosmic Microwave Background is what is left after the universe cooled. We do NOT know what became of that lost energy. That doesn't mean it violates the first law of thermo dynamics, it just means we do NOT know.