Quick note: If you’re presently grieving, don’t read this.
The original question was: If energy is neither created nor destroyed, what happens to the energy within our bodies and brains when we die? I think I understand that the metabolic energy tied up in our cells will be used in the decomposition process, but what about the electrical energy in our brains/bodies? This would seem to be a measurable amount of energy that at the moment of death is no longer required by the body/brain and would have to go somewhere. I’m not asking from a theological or spiritual perspective, but strictly as a question of physics.
… [is there] a measurable radiation of heat at the moment of death. Do you know if there have been experiments that have measured the heat loss and correlated it to the known amount of electrical energy in the human body?
Physicist: Electrical energy is nothing special. Just like the chemical energy in our bodies, it breaks down into heat. For example, the heat given off by light bulbs (or electric heaters for that matter!) is a result of electrical energy. When electricity is flowing to a light bulb, that’s where the electrical energy is going; it’s turning into light. When you pull the plug (so to speak) what tiny, tiny amount of electrical energy there is in the wires runs out almost immediately.
The term “electrical energy” is actually a little vague. So, to be specific, in our nervous system there are tiny ion pumps that maintain an imbalance of charges between the inside and outside of the nerve cells. When a nerve cell fires, charges are allowed to suddenly flow through the cell membrane in a process called an “action potential“. The way electricity flows along nerve cells is different from the way it flows down a telegraph wire (“inside-to-outside” instead of “along”), but whatever. The point is, there are mechanisms that maintain an imbalance of charge (which is electricity waiting to happen), and that imbalance is drained a little bit every time the nerve fires.
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).
The energy we “carry around” takes the form of chemical energy like fats and sugars. When our nervous system creates electrical energy we lose an equal amount of chemical energy. So, rather than being energy itself, life is all about moving energy around from one form to another.
What this question is clearly really about is the fact that it seems as though there’s a fundamental difference between animate and inanimate people. Admittedly, dead folk are a hair less energetic than living people (with some exceptions). There are a few kinds of energy (surprisingly few), but spiritual energy doesn’t seem to be one of them. In terms of physical energy, the difference between a living body and a very recently dead body is just a question of how that energy is being organized. Living critters in general are very good at using chemical energy for things like moving, growing, etc. Newly dead critters have about the same amount of chemical energy, it’s just that they don’t use it. Instead, whatever comes along to consume the body uses it (whether that’s fire or decomposition or whatever).
There have been many, surprisingly callous, attempts to measure a drop in energy and/or mass leaving the body at the so-called “moment of death”. However, these experiments have been vague and, much worse, unrepeatable. The most famous is the experiment by Dr. Duncan MacDougall in which, by putting patients dying of tuberculosis on giant scales, he found that those patients lost 21 grams on average between life and death. To be fair, homeboy had 6 data points (that is: people) and a lot of statistical noise, so his conclusions have about the same amount of statistical weight as “vaccines cause Autism“. To date, there are no confirmable experiments that show that anything special happens during death, other than a general “shutting down”. In particular, nothing that’s both “inspiring” and verifiable seems to suddenly leave the body when we die, materially or energetically.
Oops it’s supposed to say mother (bunny) not morning.
You guys have degrees right? This would be a very imaginative explanation if not, cuz I’m buying it.
his conclusions have about the same amount of statistical weight as “vaccines cause Autism“ it appears very credible then as a vaccination did cause my son’s autism.
Fook. So we rot in the box.
That article is so lame. I like Jake’s comment. However, that energy that goes back to where it came from, the continuous chaos out of space and beyond, does it carry any memory of it’s host, the body that it was in before that physical body ceased to function?
We are all history, the past, the memories like a blank disk that was filled with information of our lives, whether we ever knew each other or not, does that cease to exist? Like dinosaurs, even though we never seen one alive, let alone know how many there were, we know they existed. But they are not human, does their dna information and their energy also go back where it came from? Also, being that all this dispersed energy from this planet went back to it’s chaotic home, is it possible that some of it gets put back together, by chance, and create another human being, or some other kind of being?
I love watching movies such as King Arthur, Merlin etc. In one of them the :Lady of the Lake: says “When we are forgotten, we cease to exist”. I always loved that quote. Just as a side note 🙂
My reaction to the article:
A better response would be, hmmm I don’t know! Article continuously dances around the question of whether or not the human body has electrical properties at the time of death and where this energy travels.
Chemical energy is eaten up by the decomposition monsters ( but not destroyed?), kinetic energy is obviously not being respected here because what if someone dies with a whole lot of unused Qi, this must create some kind of super soil, coffin, insecta or whatever else is in close proximity right? (jkbs)
That’s kinda what I read from the question…To Be or not to Be and if to Be then where To Be at? (Shakespeare we need your energy to answer this one, oh wait we lost that stuff during your decomposition and I think someone mentioned dinosaurs after all of this for some reason so now I’m even more confused.)
People are quick to dismiss spiritual energy but not really clear on the answer for any other energy aside from the porous philosophy regarding chemical energy (Porous meaning full of holes not necessarily incorrect, I can’t make that judgement). This comes off as way too much personal baggage which means you obviously question or deny faith/religion/spirituality but these scientific taboos really address the same common truth, no one knows the real answer but God/Science itself. Great topic though! I love where the potential energy is for the subject.
My thoughts on the topic:
I read that the living human body has near 20W of electrical energy at times (enough to light a bulb lol I didn’t make this up, I googled it like a real scientist lmao) so is a “non-living” or “actively-decomposing body still register at 20W or has no one been “grounded” enough to measure this?
If there is a change, then what is the change and what happens to living/nonliving things around the electrically-unresolved corpse? Is there a peak elsewhere in Watts? Coroners must probe themselves and measure their own electrical state, do we factor in any impedance/resistance? If so then from where? and why…(try the loop-back butt plug)
Chemical energy seems to be the last living form of energy so a corpse, no longer able to process the energy transfer, goes into a default mode (assumption) where it becomes something but no one knows (another assumption), is the brain still functional throughout the decomposition process and if not, who’s in charge of overseeing a “correct decomposition process” because they seem to get it perfect every-time without a brain but yet our bodies often malfunction with one (causing that whole death thing in the first place)
Conclusion:
I’m not doing any physical research on this topic but I can help think through the limited discoveries we’re going to reach as humans on this concept. Currently we don’t really know a thing but we do know how to sound smart acknowledging our ignorance.
Death as we know it is a complex process and this auto-pilot system results in someone mysteriously pressing the magical red button to eject the life energy into an unknown and reset the body to a self-destruct mode from the inside-out. Human remains tend to take an extra 8-12 years at least ( Google it) to finish this task. This is huge in my opinion…My computer caught a virus around 12-13 years ago and I got the blue screen of death so I asked, who programmed my computer screen to turn blue? And if it can continue to process this command, why not any other command? The biggest difference is that this is not a human but also that there was no process in the disk failure /after-disk failure, never got a chance to mourn or say goodbye. Science failed me in its simplicity of binary genetics but in studying living creatures as with nature, there is a continuum that is inexplicably the number one divider among humans. Who is pressing the buttons that seem to reset energy transmission? Science. nature or God? Why not just trash humans like humans trash everything else? Does my soul become the creative energy for a cactus in Nevada one day? How can we measure all of this uncertainty, kPa? If my electrons are still working after I die, can my loved ones use them for a backup generator or as an extra antennae, pacemaker or something? Answering these questions should help us find a solution.
p.s. And I also believe vaccinations are one of the catalysts leading to autism along with digestion of dye chemicals found in common food/beverages.
As analogy as much as science I find I can have an understanding that the warmth that characterised a living person dissipates to render a body cold and stiff like the heat from a hot water bottle. It warms something else which warms something else , each time less so, but maybe a lender material or a wider area, so that could be said to be scientific but us also easy enough for a small childs understanding and acceptance, and someone deep in grief who has no time or energy themselves for more proper deeper scientific thinking or explanation.
One of the best article.
Jake, to use someone else’s words and not give them credit is slimy. Plagiarism is slimy.
It takes biochemical energy to maintain any living system. Once this life force is lost due to failure of the supporting biological systems entrophy occurs. Other biological systems then use the potential energy of the dead biological entity for their own growth and survival. In humans immediately following clinical death ( no heart beat or respiration) research has shown there is an initial increase in neuronal activity for about 4 minutes as the brain struggles through instinctual drives to survive. This is why some people can be revived through the use of a defibrillator following a heart attack during this small corridor of time and report on their unusual OBE or NDE. Not all resusitated individuals have this experience.
The original question was: If energy is neither created nor destroyed, …
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To buy the theory that energy cannot be destroyed or consumed, is to say a car can run forever on one gallon of gas. Sniff, sniff … I don’t buy it.
I will bit.
Start with correcting a mistake in your post.
The car is not what powers the vehicle, it is the propulsion material, of whatever kind, that powers the car. The propulsion material is what gets converted and the result is converted and converted again and again Where is the end of the conversion?
50 years of study has convinced me that human energy is NOT the same for each human but let us just keep it generalized and call it propulsion material that gets converted. What is the end result of multiple conversions? It can be argued that the conversions cause a dilution. However small the end result is, what IS the end result? Even if there is and end result, what IS the end result, however miniscule it may be?
It does not “poof” disappear.
LN
So many people all writing irrelevant comments. Not a single comment seemed interesting except someone quoting what Aaron Freeman said on the radio. Anyone grounded understands, and more importantly feels, the truth, which is scientific and involves some form of logical explanation as to what happens to what we call our “electrical energy” when we die. It changes form, it stays and is passed to the decomposition process, it gets eaten by bugs or animals, whatever. The article compares it to a lightbulb being unplugged, which is dumb because a lightbulb has a steaming source of energy, and when unplugged it stops streaming, while the body has its own energy held, and like the questionnee asks, where, for example, does the energy held in the brain go. Maybe the article is trying to say there is no energy “held” anywhere, and that energy is moved around very quickly, so that when we die no more energy gets moved to the brain. I don’t know. All I know for sure is that these comments are dumb.
very interesting, both the article and the comments that follow- the entire process of life, is truly amazing, from start to finish- clearly this topic would never be taught in any religion- as that which is not understood, is given to a religious explanation- as technology and science progresses, our understanding of life (seen and not seen) will as well- i just wish we could get past the big bang soon- (if in fact thats how all of this came to be)- Iron, can only come from exploding stars, and yet life itself wouldnt be able live without Iron- here we are-there we go: dust in the wind, to nurture and feed new life- to come into being 🙂
I am no scientist but as any gardener knows the breaking down of organic creates the most wonderful of gardens and provides the nutrients from which our food grows… which in turn breaks down and the cycle continues. A dissipation of energy from the original source must occur as the compost spreads and circle ever widens but each cycle only exists with the energy of the previous. For non gardeners the concept of decaying matter / compost may not resonate, or be reassuring if that is what you seek, but for any gardener anywhere we know that death feeds life. Wearethesame you nailed it above – here we are-there we go: dust in the wind, to nurture and feed new life- to come into being.
I came to this site due to the curiosity I had of why the lights blinked and my house shook once me dad died in our living room I found all the explanation helpful. Thank you.
I would like to get in touch with Jake to show him how right he is. I have several videos captured by my YI in home camera ( triggered by movements only) where it seems like the electrical energy of my recently deceased husband had been captured time and again.
We simply lack the knowledge and technology to detect evidence of human energy (soul) leaving our shells. Life energy operates on a frequency and scale that we have yet to achieve. We like to believe that we have mastered all that there is to know about how the Universe works, but we haven’t even scratched the surface. Even studying black holes, we know that they can bend and even break the laws of physics. We are babies in the grand scheme of things. Having a PHD does not give someone intellectual dominion over much of the secrets that the Universe possesses. Being devoutly religious doesn’t give a person insight into the truth, either. Perhaps in 1000 years we’ll have a much better understanding of what happens to “us” after death, but until that time, all we can do is speculate.
Some after-death experiences have shown the survival-factor is there, when the deceased “sees” what was going on regarding people around their “dead body” – and these events were documented as actually happening. Best examples were in a surgery room, and documented by the medical staff.
I’ve done my own research into this subject, and it IS there … what we are lacking are defining explanations. There is one important point “science researchers” need to understand – and that simply is, you can’t get “hard data explanations” from “other people’s experiences.” You MUST do this research yourself.
I’ll also add this – it’s true what people say regarding “opening the door” LOL … there are spirits out there who (simply put) aren’t wanted, and are stuck here. The psychological factor in this defines them as what they were before they died – sadists, narcissists, sociopaths … “antisocials.” If you think they were “bad” while they were alive, just wait till you see the new version.
As Steven Hawking said. When you’re dead, you’re dead. No after life, no angels, no Gabriel playing at the Pearly Gates. No 76 virgins waiting for you. No Heaven or Hell, nor Pergatory. No religious beliefs from earth. Just interned or ashes sprinkled on earth. Death of humans happened long before their stupid religious beliefs. Dead is dead. Nobody is going anywhere. You simply cease to exist.
“As Steven Hawking said. When you’re dead, you’re dead.”
Hawking, like all “scientists” who instantly rebuke this subject, had never “looked into it.”
Like this topic: “If energy is neither created nor destroyed, what happens to the energy within our bodies and brains when we die?” …it’s obvious to me the error is the approach using the word “energy.” Whatever this really boils down to as a defining “explanation” … we simply don’t know what it is.
As I said above: “…you can’t get “hard data explanations” from “other people’s experiences.” You MUST do this research yourself.”
This subject is REAL … go ahead – “open the door” – and, as in some cases, GET READY TO RUN LOL.
I throught my life have studied ancient history in conjuntion eith so called alien life. I personally have experienced five NDEs… I as well learned in various religious beliefs, eastern beliefs etc. I am much studied in the afterlife teaching of new age enlightenment groups of today…. and so much more…. no, I am not a scientist!
Because of my crossovers, as well as my studies, I can understand so much of what all your comments struggled with.
During one of my NDEs, (believe this or not…. I could care less….) I travelled to my original planetary home, and stood before my council. What I can tell you is that there is no biblical heaven or hell, yet there are various afterlife soul homes which are designed to mimic a form of heaven. Re-incarnation is real,…. the Netherworld is also real. We are hybrid gene manipulated creations by alien advanced intelligence beings who love to play god!
If you embard on these avenues of study and research, you will find the answer to most of your questions!
Cheers!
The bodies electrical energy is fairly basic, ….. if you want something much more intriguing, try and consider what the composition of the soul is?
I have concluded that the soul is somewhat of a computer program. Also, it appears that there are various forms of soul purpose!
But what is a soul composd of? I have some ideas….. what are yours?
My son was killed in a plane crash. I stood near the runway to watch them leave. As the plane passed me, my son and I made a brief eye contact as they passed. In that brief eye contact, I saw the plane crash, and where it would occur so that I could find them. A long painful search was conducted, because I could not convince the pilot of the search plane to look where I knew they would be. Finally, he consented…. yes they were where I was shown!
My mother was living with us when she passed away in the middle of the night.We were in bed sleeping when my partner woke me and said I should go check on her.We were on the second floor ,directly over her room on the first floor.When I entered her room , I knew before I even got to the bed that she was gone.Ron told me later tht he had been woken suddenly,and that he absolutely felt something pass through him.He’s a very practical , no – nonsense type of man , very quiet and reserved.I still believe him to this day.
Basically theroy saying that electrical energy transformed into chemical one immediately at time of death and get decomposed by insect and other microorganisms present in soil ….please if someone know answer me that if energy is not created or nor be destroyed..then where goes these energy which is already utilized during physical exercise ?