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.
I think if we looked into our atoms we would just find energy at its raw form. Isnt that the same exact energy that was around going back to the big bang? I think the only difference in being human and being anything else is the conscience we seem to love. Since we don’t have any answers on where it comes from, how it works and where it goes when we die its hard for me to accept any answers as truth when concerning death. Awesome discussion, and very civil- well done internet.
practically people dies. but hypothetically does not.According to A Einstine energy can never be created nor destroyed..like wise the energy within the body never dies, hope so.If it is converted like in decomposition, the energy is converted to mechanical energy( locomotion of microbes that consume body( dead).Again by burning body it is converted to heat energy.
After the initial conversion of energy to what again is converted to.?
Again ?? lies in between
conclusion, if the stated line of A Einstine is right then life never dies..if it isn’t the stated lines of Einstine is wrong.
The law of Physics is very clear about our consciousness and energy……Clearly energy is living and cannot be destroyed….
So, apparently, even though the physicist answers the question, the people who comment think they’re going to prove him wrong? Lol.. Please, give me a break.
There are different fields within physics and different scientific perspectives on this subject – therefore no two answers are ever the same. The ‘truth’ is that we are still discovering it.
I don’t think it’s so much about give the physicist a break as they only see things black and white thru science and I lay those who think outside of the box with abstract thought actually do amazing things. Like Louis Pasteur for example and others. There is too many variables that physicists do not account for. The 21 grams test-not theory TEST. Things outside of the realm of conventional thinking. Physicists tend to think that when you die- That’s it you dead end of discussion. From all the things that prove that isn’t the case they negate or discount as coincidence. I’m sorry if your a true scientist and everything over the 2000 years of writing discusses and proves that there is another place after this why would you not spend your research time using those as a plateau to prove it’s right than more unsupported factors to prove it’s wrong?
I have experienced energy all around, seen it and even sensed some trying to communicate, I do not need to go into detail, but I know I am not the only one who has experienced spiritual life around us. A lot of my friends have had similar experiences which they described to me. I am a person who likes to be clear headed and very perceptive. My question is, to the physist, how would you describe and explain that particular energy around us. Thanks.
Xlnt question. This I bet is hard to answer.
Is excess electrical energy ever produced by the neurons for example at the end of a muscular movement or highly emotive state? If it takes a chemical process to produce the chemical energy, that help neurons fire in the nervous system, how is that energy not ” created” as the only step before that, as far as I know, is the bodies breaking down of food for ” energy”? Food doesn’t have any kind of energy by itself before the body adds it’s special blend. Or does it?
There are a few kinds of energy (surprisingly few), but spiritual energy doesn’t seem to be one of them
I am not a scientist but wanted to comment on the above statement…before thermometers were invented, there was no way to measure heat energy. What if one day there’s an instrument to measure spiritual energy or ones “aura”? My point is that as science develops, new discoveries are made. Even Tesla thought: “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”
Within every atom is an unbelievable amount of ‘bounded’ energy. The atom is balanced with itself, nucleus against electrons. Electrons are MOVING. This is the source of all chemical energy: electrons move and jump valences and between atoms, forming multi-atom structures called molecules. A molecule can only exist because atoms are endlessly in motion. And molecules interact with other molecules via the same process of trading electrons-in-motion between each other, resulting in trades of whole atoms as well. When systems break down their energy is relieved the need to spend itself on maintaining those kind of active bonds and exchanges; physics does not even understand what consciousness is, things like Global Consciousness Project demonstrate the validity of “extra-physical” fields of information-energy in which life participates. Science needs to lose its ignorance and arrogance and learn to see what it does not yet understand, as Tesla said when science starts taking non-physical phenomena seriously it will make more progress in a single decade than all years thus far. Real thinkers like Tesla and Einstein understood that our knowledge are drops in an ocean; faith and passion for the sublime, for truth itself and not for one’s own mere ego and proud skepticism are the real basis of science.
For any science to believe that they are the pinnacle of understanding of any one thing in a clear, concise, black and white fashion is a crippling fog to that “science”. I am not in disagreement with a lot of the understood, but I don’t rule out perceptions of unidentified energy and methods that our brain can’t grasp at this stage of human development. There are so many real life examples of science discovering methods of seeing how things work that are constantly evolving its almost laughable to come to a conclusion like the above and expect that to be forever finite and never seen from a different perspective, with a potential for a better understanding of analysis that seems impossible with our science as of now. The fish believes it’s not in a bowl and the world was once flat. Science is important but shouldn’t be so rigid that it creates tunnel vision for the evolvement of a better science. I respect the writer but wonder how this will stand up in 500 years. MAYBE it will stand up… maybe it won’t. Either is possible if you ask me.
I believe energy as well as all things (dead or alive) fractalize down to an undetectable unit of, who knows what. We have no idea how small things can get, or how big the universe is for that matter but Al was right about one thing. Energy is there. Everything we do makes us a part of it. Just being alive marrys us to it until our bidies die. Then it get smaller and smaller until, who kniws what?…..Aloha
What about out of body experiences, where a person was clinically dead (science). Where the person, when revived was able to say in detail everything that went on in the room.
Science is obviously unwilling to look at the obvious, which is documented thousands of times, not isolated incidents.
Then we have sleep walkers, that are able to walk in their clinically proven being asleep, yet they are able to walk without hitting into objects, with their eyes closed. According to science, this is impossible.
Need more, I have more, those are just two of the obvious.
You know. You could have just said you don’t know. That would have been much shorter than this article.
Well, if energy is can neither be created or destroyed, but transferred, where does it go after a body it is burned? I do believe it is transferred to another body (animal, human, etc.). I wish a spirit would come back and tell us if there is an after life and describe it even though many people have told many near death experiences.
Basically when a person dies the energy present in it disappears.
May be after death a sort of exothermic reaction takes place in which the heat present in the body is released. And as a result our body temperature decreases .
Now this heat energy combines with the atoms of the air thus making atoms to move faster.
In God I TRUST >>> In SCIENCE I only LISTERN >>>
Looking at energy as a whole and recognizing that energy cannot be destroyed, can it be theoretical correct that when any living thing be it humans, animals, plants, or even stars; the energy housed in all things that “die” is dispersed. Dispersed in a countless number of ways that surely impacts the next thing closest to that thing that has “died”. Take the death of a star for example. The death of a star can have huge impacts on a massive scale, right? Well, now take humans for another example. A human dying also impacts greatly those closest to them be it a distant relative or a close friend. The point is, what they’re feeling when they’re mourning or grieving when a person dies could possibly be the energy being dispersed from that “death” of the loved one. The “death” continues to impact those friends and family even days or weeks later upon recieving the bad news, right? Now go back to the death of the star. Upon dying, all the stars energy is scattered throughout and impacting neighboring planets and galaxies. Just like the death of a human, the death of a star may have small consequences or massive ones.
Our goal in life should be to put an impact on those closest to us and those farthest from us. Make others smile and happy to have met you. Don’t leave your energy closeted and trapped. Disperse it to the distant galaxies and create new life upon multiple impacts; as well as take in all the energy you can for your grieving will pass and you will have become stronger than you ever were.
CAN WE CLONE WITHOUT DNA?
DICK CHENEY STILL ALIVE.
It strikes me as I read this I was just talking about this with a group of students. We were talking about energy and as humans what sources of energy we have available to us. Which is why I was online looking for energy info. During this class I wanted the students to be open to new thoughts and ideas so we watched a couple episodes of Brain Games. (Season 1 episodes 1&2) Now yes these are very basic shows on the human mind and our perception of reality but they are accepted as what we believe we know.
In a nut shell they point out that we really don’t know what reality is. We only have our perception of reality. Our brain fills in missing information as well as completely ignores other information we are not expecting to find. The reality we perceive is heavily dependent on our experiences thus far in life, which would include our education of what is fact and what is fiction. Also what we are expecting to experience or find heavily weights what we pay attention to. Showing it is possible to not be able to identify a result or even able to have a particular thought. So I would offer the following thought. Science is not fact it is a philosophy of what we are experiencing. And a possible way to look at a certain set of circumstances or materials. After all where does science come from. In part from the philosophies of skeptisism and imperialism. Plus I’m sure other influences. But for some reason we have forgotten that. Science is a philosophy not an absolute. Otherwise I would suggest proven scientific fact would not change overtime. Fact is fact and that does not change. Opinion (philosophy) is very subject to change.
So I believe the physicist answered as he is able to understand it and as truthfully as he is able to do, given his experience and education thus far in life his mind has created a matrix by which his brain interprets information and fills in gaps and also decides what to not pay attention to. This also means if we were to use a different matrix to look at this question we most certainly have a different set of “facts”. Or would we? 😉
I’m just sayin
Great post Mind Body. I like your rationale.
Mind Body said it best! Thank you for that response!
great discussion… i thank you, as a sleep walker and philosophy student
It doesn’t appear that any of the spiritualists here are aware that all processes of the biosphere are fueled by the energy of the sun and are sustained by the flow of this energy as it gets tapped at innumerable points before exiting into space. To posit a soul, or spirit, is illogical and has less to do with reality than the price of tea in China–except to allow the ego to feel special. No one seems to question why they need to feel special in this way. Everything is fueled by something and here it’s the false sense of separation. It think that we are totally NOT self-contained, as such ideas as soul, etc., would lead one to believe, but rather are entirely linked–and that it’s our linking (bonding energy, as stated above) that is life itself. BTW, the preciousness of our brief existence is a value that far outstrips such ideas as soul, etc., which add no value to the planet, the human race, or anything relevant.
It is a subject that is open for all interpretations yet there is dark energy out there but we cannot find proof, or dark matter but we know it exists. It is hard to believe that we do not transform into other forms in the universe. If we are a small part of a expanding universe than maybe we are reborn into another phase of life, there are many universes or we think than maybe we move between them ????
I like Edwards proposal. I feel there is so much we still do not and cannot understand in this point of time What is clear to me is that when a loved one is lost, we get energy from the loved one and that I can tell you is not in my mind. That energy is then transformed into what connects us with them when we depart. The scientist use only the black and white pictures. Why do we have such a loving disposition? It was meant to be this way. Has anyone considered that we are constantly being tested in our worth as human beings? Also can a scientist really relate to the universe as a whole. Think outside the box.
well i know this… during my grandma’s death… i asked her to show me a sign of life after death…. at her funeral…. my watch stopped…. during the ceremony… and started right back up 5 minutes after it…. and it was a new battery purchased 2 weeks before the whole ordeal
@C. DeCosta There was most certainly a way to measure heat pre-thermometer: Touching it. We’ve got thermometers in our hands. The rest of this comment is generally directed at the comments section:
It seems some of you didn’t read the whole article/answer. He explicitly answers that when somebody dies, there isn’t any “life energy” or “soul” that leaves. Our bodies are chock-full of energy, in many forms: Chemical energy, in all our fats, sugars, proteins, etc.; Atomic energy, which is in every atom that makes up everything, including us; Kinetic energy, when we move; Potential energy, from gravity and such affecting us; and electric energy, which was the focus of the question. All of these kinds of energy eventually just turn into heat. If this doesn’t make sense to you, you must consider what heat is: Jiggling atoms and molecules. Chemical energy eventually turns into heat by the molecules decomposing and releasing bond energy. Atomic energy turns into heat when an atom is split. Kinetic energy is already technically heat, just on a much larger and directed scale, and it will eventually turn into small-scale jiggling, i.e. just plain heat. Potential energy turns into heat by turning into kinetic energy and then into heat. Electric energy, the one that everyone seems to think is what makes someone alive, it seems, turns into heat (as mentioned in the article) by electrical resistance, like a lightbulb. Electrons only have so much energy, and eventually that energy gets lost because of atoms repelling them and displacing the atoms, turning it into heat.
Very lastly, Einstein, first of all, did not come up with the conservation of energy. That was known for a very long time. Second, conservation of energy does NOT state that “consciousness” is something special and conserved. Say what you will about how special people are for having consciousness, mechanically, consciousness is literally just a form of computation with certain characteristics, including considering oneself and processing one’s environment.
I hope this answers the question enough to silence the whole “but what about the anima?” bit.
@ Aeiou….Funny how you try to make sound easy and rationalize this what geniuses and scientists have not been able to explain forever. All your insinuations about how we just die and that’s it ,is humorous at best. Why is it humorous you are wondering? 1st and foremost the 21 gram experiment that was only found to happen in human beings. When the experiment was tried on animals it did not have the same 21 gram result. 2nd energy cannot be created nor destroyed. These theories I keep hearing about assimilation into the environment is also pretty humorous. What you guys are talking about of bugs and stuff eating our chemical energy cannot be accounted for in a humans energy in its entirety. Look at the size of many bugs and then the energy of people. Fitting a humans energy into bugs is like trying to fit the ocean into A milk carton. In stead of giving these nonsensical religious and or scientific hypothesis’s based on personal opinion and minute’ science. Why don’t some of you look deeper into the topic instead of giving shallow regurgitated opinions. Look the same wizards of smart in 1400 a.d. we’re still arguing the world was flat with there comprehensive scientifically proven hypothesis’s. How did that turn out for them??? Since some of you are so scientifically gifted why don’t you break the cycle down smaller to protons,neutrons and electrons at a molecular level. Tell me what you see. And explain EMF readers when goofy ghost hunters see spirits. I guess that would make many people, from many different time periods, that speak many different languages that have all witnessed the same thing nothing more than mass hysteria. Even though they have never spoken to each other nor were living in the same time periods and didn’t speak the same language just flat out either hallucinating or a victim of the placebo effect. Lol….that doesn’t even sound logical if you think about it. Sounds to me more irrational to deny the existence of such things.
@Jason, first, a minor thing: It’s “Aieou”, not “Aeiou”. Now to the argument.
“1st and foremost”, before the 21-gram experiment is brought up as a point once more: I would like to see something that confirms the validity of the experiment. According to every source I can find, only one of his measured six people actually lost about 21 grams or so at death. Everybody else fluctuated, very likely due to sweating.
Second, yes, that is called the conservation of energy. Your point is…?
Third, I did not mention environment-based decay, but thank you for bringing that up. Your analogy of “an ocean in a milk carton” doesn’t work. Why? Firstly, bugs aren’t the only things taking energy from the mass of a corpse. Many things including fungi and just plain heat transfer also contribute. Secondly, it’s not just one bug, it’s thousands over a long period of time, and they don’t decay the entire body to the point of an atom.
Fourth, okay. On a subatomic scale, here’s how energy dissipates, solely from a freshly-dead corpse. Chemical energy: On this scale, there is no such thing. Subatomic particles, by definition, don’t form molecules and therefore they do not store energy in chemical bonds. Kinetic and potential energy: Electrons are almost constantly moving, but this energy leaves an atom when they go down to lower energy levels, releasing a photon. Atomic and electric energy are also not applicable at this level. Does this satisfy your question, Jason?
To posit a soul as an explanation for the intelligence inherent in life is only to trivialize Life. Rather, look to the enormous profundity of Existence, Itself. Chemicals are not dumb objects in need of a soul to direct them; nor is matter, of any stripe; nor the processes that drive the thermodynamic chain of events on planet Earth. It’s all part of one whole and glorious reality. Please don’t prejudice any of it in order to boost an insecure human ego!
from my understanding of energy and how it is created or how it cannot be destroyed there is a universal energy that holds the universe in balance some people call it “karma”, “yin yang” or whatever. the energy is all around us in chairs, tables, cats , dogs everything there constancy vibrating giving shape to the things we know through protons and electrons on even smaller than a nano scale all that energy has to come from some were so i think when we die the electrical impulses in our brain leave our physical being and becomes part of the universal energy again it is simply released back where it came from like in the Hindu religion of reincarnation except like i learned in chemistry “like dissolves like” you lead a bad life in the next the universe will place you where you belong because the energy that controls your brain simply cannot be destroyed
@ Stephen- Brilliant hypothesis!! I talked similarly in an earlier post
It is quite simple. Raw energy can express itself in human cells in a variety of ways. The raw power from your electrical out can do whatever the device it powers tells it to do. Whether it is a TV, a computer or a hair dryer. Take away the the “appliance” and all you have is “raw power”. So take away the brain cells and all you have is raw power, no thought, no memories, no emotion…. Just raw power to dissipate as heat. Face it, we hate the concept of death, so we cling to supernatural reassurances to make the thought of death not final…..even though for each of us, it is inevitable..
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Life/energy/animation. All different subjects unto themselves.
If a person is correct that there is no such thing as spiritual life before and after death, when they die they have lost nothing. But if a person is correct about eternal life in the spiritual realm, then they have gained everything!
This subject has always been an interest of mine since I was a kid and had my own death experience and communucated with my Brother when he passed away at a relatively young age. Both experiences removed the fear of dying. In my search for “truths” I have come to a couple of conclusions, “if it wasn’t for man religion would be perfect”, people spend too much time seeking the creator of man and no time seeking the creator of energy. Humans love to think they have the answers but we are like newborns in understanding all things. In fact, newborns may have more knowledge than the so called experts. It would be nice to have the aswers, but truth is we can’t handle that kind of knowledge.
Caroline hitch, you are special, just as each part of the whole is special. Love is energy. No one knows why..yet. disagreement is is real both scientifically and spiritually. Bottom line, no one knows and neither do i. But i stand on what i feel and i do not want it to be on hate or demeaning anyone. What will be will be and what fun to try and find out or speculate. Luck to all on yor paths to where it seems you want to go or your energy wants to go.
I think that the visible form of energy maintains to exist, while the electricity that wires us can easily be transfered to air, or some other form. Your vibrations still would exist, in a form of your corpse, which would just be a different type of energy, alive deep down in atoms and particles, but not alive in a form of former connection that they made together which made you move and “live”
while I don’t pretend to have any answers to the questions posed. I have always thought and felt that when any animal dies (human or otherwise) that energy is transposed to another animal in utero. Remember over the centuries we have had herds of thousands and thousands on animals in Africa and elsewhere and those herds have dwindled. Where did that animal energy go to? if not to another being.
I couldn’t see the entity I was talking to (it was completely dark) but it was me speaking, and saying to this entity “I want her.” This was after seeing a woman running after someone who I saw steal something. I don’t know if it was a dream I once had, but it felt so real, and I never forgot it.
If I chose my mom, I chose a good, loving woman who has always been there for me in good and bad times.
I also saw the nurse holding me after I came out of my mother’s womb at birth. Perhaps that was right before my soul entered my new body.
Was that another dream? It also felt so real.
But who was I talking to?
Nobody can convince me that we came from nothing because our existence and evolution is so awesome.
And just the fact that most human beings only have average intelligence. So, something had to have helped us become civilized.
I have been playing with the notion that what if memory is merely software written from experiences that have been accessed throughout life and that it is stored within our energy along with all other information perhaps a little like design bios.
A bit far fetched but no more so than telling someone 300 years ago that we will build stations in space and men to moons.
I also believe that for life to be possible two parts must exist, fertile matter & fertile energy the matter could be DNA the energy what I have described above, all live can be constructed from DNA and paired with the fertile energy intelligent instruction for created organisms to learn and recalibrate to suit its environment with each additional offspring cycle.
If our race/planet is to die what better than to send out life probes with both fertile matter & fertile energy to prospective host planets that way even if the planet has one of either on its surface with luck it can then start its life cycle.
If nothing else the concept would make a great source for science fiction.
Hugh
We are so concerned where we are going to go after death, but don’t question where we were before life….if you believe in an after life, then you would be an idiot to think that your soul was created only at conception.
Argument from ignorance is a fascinating human trait. It doesn’t allow us to say “I don’t know.” There is a difference between knowing and accepting death. You don’t have to know death to accept it.
I found this thread to be an amazing read. I think some people have accused the physist of having tunnel vission without realising that this is exactly what accusers could be doing. I myself am troubled with the connection between Energy and life but I dont think its fair we judge science for trying to explain it.. I think humans naturally love to think that we are all unique and special which makes it hard when science suggests we aren’t. I guess as we are all humans in some ways its hard not to ignore the fact that we all seem to be living independent lives… I cant explain outer body experiences or my own observations to super natural phenomena. However, I have realised that people do change from childhood to death. Watching elderly is particular is interesting as over their lives they change dramatically both physically and psyco… Another interesting fact is after an event or trauma, particularly a brain injury or disease, people can instantly change. Their cells (apart from damaged or dead cells ie brain cells) are the same but they are different. They might forget entirely who they were and they in reality become a completely different person. Thus, my view is individualism is a product of the brain. A personality in my opinon is a mixture between life experiences – culture, influence, health, environment and ones perception. Perception appears to be a unique trait to an individual. These characteristics makes the later question difficult. If life existed after death which personality would a person adopt? What memory would they have? What about a child that was born with a brain impairment? I guess an important q is were we created (an individual being of energy (which is undetectable to date) at birth or are we merely just recycled energy living? All living cells are essentially made of the same thing. Once we break down our DNA to amino acids we get down to carbon and oxygen… we break these down into particles… When we break these sub paricles down we get into an interesting area of physics… If there was a unique identifier to be discovered it could be in the realms of these unknown god like particles. My view to date is that we, like all life, are nothing more then examples of energy (an undiscovered fassit of it) living. I say energy losely as I am possitive we do not understand it fully.. One thing is certain tho is we have a lot to learn about both energy, our purpose (if there is one) and who we are… if we are in fact anything other thing energy (what ever this actually is) living in this human biological form.
Good discussion. I was thinking about a comment that food has no energy until we eat it being in the right direction. A piece of food uses its energy to stay together. If it is held together by complex molecular bonds then when we eat it we get a slow release as the bonds are processed by our bodies. If it is held together by simple molecular bonds we get a burst of energy as the simple connections break all at once. So if a person is held together by the most complex of all bonds, then with death there must be some sort of very slow processing of our energy as the complex connections unconvolute and separate into energy. My dad just died and with the incredible heaviness of heart I feel, I can’t help but wonder, where the energy is. He affected many people. Maybe his energy is the continuation of the effect he had on us. It will be slow to leave. Still, doesn’t seem like afterlife.
Put all aspects of studies together. Physics, Science even religion and eye out the similarities and connections. Doesn’t matter what subject there can be only one answer.
The physicists explanation is based on known facts. Any opposition to known facts without credible evidence is speculation (wishful thinking). Study evolution on a microscopic level and you will learn that first life was chemical reactions that utilized available energy in its environment to become ordered and eventually serve more complex purposes. We are just an extremely complicated sum of chemical reactions to take advantage of available energies. That doesn’t mean that we are not amazing and have an amazing destiny (non-deterministic). I am on my own spiritual journey but using science to prove whatever I may come to discover. For those that need to cling to an eternal spirit. We are in fact star dust. All our atoms and energies come from the known universe. When we die the energy is released as energy (heat, electrons) and those atoms and energies will go on forever (energy is never destroyed only changed). So you are eternal. Embrace that.
Supernatural events: Our neural pathways, while electrically charged, do create a kind of circuit board. While working on antennas in the aerospace industry I realize….it may be possible that our minds may be able to receive signals (frequencies) from similar energy sources…or even send. But after death the power switch is turned off. I do not have an idea about ghosts as organized energy (evidence of afterlife), both external and post mortem, but whatever the truth about them it will be based on facts and evidence (science) to explain them.
What if your soul was eternal. I find it unlikely that a current human is special enough to preserve for all eternity. Live with your current memories and regrets for all eternity? Selfishly hoarding / trap energy that the universe uses like its life blood. I would imagine that after some time as an eternal spirit that each and every one would come to reach a point of enlightenment and realize the selfishness and then sacrifice itself for the perpetuation of the universe or serve a functional purpose (like triggering chemical reactions on planets that are without life and thereby spreading life).
Destiny – It is the nature of the universe to consume and repurpose energy (everything from suns to black holes). Life energy seems to consume energy and become increasingly organized. Evolutionary speaking and taking into account the aforementioned antenna circuit, what could that circuit look like in another 2000 years. A mental supercomputer or device that can manipulate external energies (manipulate reality) or truly be worthy of remaining eternal.
I believe we should continue our individual spiritual journeys (understating of energy evolution) but based on proven facts and not impulsive emotional delusions and wishful thinking.
The question still remains unanswered. Where does the energy go? The first guy got it all wrong. He’s talking bout energy being created and being able to decepat. No, that scientificaly impossible. To be honest, you can’t speak of energy and not spirituality.