• Question: If life/ our minds was/were an energy, then because energy can't be created or destroyed, only transferred, do we become ghosts because apparently ghosts are a type of energy.

    Asked by maddiet to Mark, Matthew, Mike, Paul, Sabina on 13 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Sabina Hatch

      Sabina Hatch answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Interesting theory. Indeed you cannot destroy or create energy. There is no evidence to say whether the mind/consciousness is an energy. But if it was a separate energy source maybe it would dissipate like heat if it is not continuously fed by fuel. Maybe it could be absorbed like light into a material. Who knows…

    • Photo: Mike Lee

      Mike Lee answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Energy can not be created or destroyed, but it does like to spread itself out. Think about a cup of tea – it is full of heat energy, but that energy goes in to the air and spreads out. Eventually the tea is no longer hot because it has lost all the extra heat energy.

      Our lives are a bit like a hot cup of tea. We need to keep the tea hot, we need to keep adding energy. We do this by eating food, and breathing air. We use the energy to make repairs to our body, and keep ourselves alive. When we die, the energy we used to live just spreads out. The cup of life gets cold without turning necessarily into a ghost.

      Do you believe in ghosts? I’ve heard some quite strange ghost stories, although I’ve never seen a ghost myself.

    • Photo: Mark Jackson

      Mark Jackson answered on 15 Mar 2014:

      It is certainly true that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed into other forms. And you are definitely made up of energy: there is kinetic energy in your body’s motions, bonding energy in the molecules you are composed of, and most of all the energy needed to produce the particles in your body thanks to Einstein’s equation E = mc^2. After you die, that energy will continue to exist.

      But whether you will be able to be aware of yourself to take advantage of this energy is unlikely. As your body decays the chemical bonds break apart and form new molecules, which interact with the surroundings. It’s like a raindrop being absorbed back into an ocean: the raindrop is still there, but it’s been redistributed so that it’s part of something much greater than itself. Possibly it is aware of its new existence, but probably not.

      As for ghosts, since nobody has ever actually seen one it’s a bit difficult for me to comment on how they might be a form of energy.

    • Photo: Paul Coxon

      Paul Coxon answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      Ghosts are the results of either easily explainable natural phenomena, or an overactive imagination.

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