Science confirms that matter is indeed made of energy fields.in short you It’s an energy field, but not of the “chakra” or “aura” variety. I’m not talking about what you find in the alternative medicine section of an indie bookstore.
So what are we talking about? We all know that matter is made up of molecules and atoms. Atoms, in turn, are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons (which can be collectively called “nucleons”) are still made up of tiny particles called quarks. Therefore, electrons and quarks are the building blocks of matter.
There are two properties that define matter: size and mass, both of which are determined at the subatomic level by related concepts called energy and force fields. Let’s look at both of these in turn.
size of matter
When talking about how matter is put together, the most familiar building blocks are atoms. Collecting the right number and type of atoms (oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, etc.) can create a human body.
Atoms are mostly empty space. They consist of a small atomic nucleus containing nucleons (protons and neutrons) surrounded by a cloud of electrons. The nucleus is only about one trillionth the volume of an atom, the rest being the electron cloud. However, electrons are also small, so there are almost no clouds in space. (Scientists call it a “cloud” of electrons because, according to quantum mechanics, an electron is everywhere at the same time, and he only appears in one place when an atom interacts with the surrounding environment. )
But atomic free space is not completely empty. It is filled with an electromagnetic field that binds electrons to the nucleus. Therefore, the size of an atom is ultimately determined by how close or far the electron cloud is to the nucleus. Larger atoms have more electrons and larger clouds that extend farther from the nucleus.
mass of matter
A nucleon is about 2,000 times as heavy as an electron. In other words, your mass — the reason why your bathroom scale appears higher than you think — is in protons and neutrons. Since protons and neutrons are made of quarks, you might think that quarks themselves are heavy, but they are not. The quark mass is only about 2% of the nucleon mass. So where does mass come from?
As with many things in particle science, we must turn to Albert Einstein and his famous equation E = mc.2Quarks move very fast — in fact, a significant fraction of the speed of light. This means that it has a lot of kinetic energy, which we call kinetic energy.
Subscribe for counterintuitive, surprising and impactful stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday
But nucleons made of quarks are incredibly small. They are basically spheres with a radius of about 1/1000th of a meter. The only way to keep these fast-moving quarks confined to tiny spheres is to use incredibly strong forces. A strong force equates to a lot of energy, in this case potential energy.
you are energy
Incredibly, what this means is that 98% of the mass that makes you up, and indeed all matter, is not a thing. Instead, it is a combination of kinetic (transfer) and potential (binding) energies within the nucleon.Remember, Einstein’s equations tell us that mass and energy are equalSo the vast amount of energy inside the nucleon makes up most of our mass.
This is a surprising and thought-provoking conclusion. Much like a grain of sand makes up a sandbag, it’s a space that’s almost empty rather than the intuitive idea that it’s solid and made up of masses of atoms. If you could somehow take a snapshot of all the atoms in your body and locate them all, you could find an empty space strewn with electrons and nuclei, bound together by electromagnetic energy.
We prove Einstein’s equation simply because each of us exists.
