Is conservation of energy a law?

[Viva Sativa]

I was having a debate over the status of the law of conservation of energy with a friend of mine. I stated that death is an exception to said law. His premise was that if energy can only be transferred into another form of energy, any electrical charge that dissipates from that host body most be transferred somewhere. I then explained to him that the human race as we know it has yet to record the electricity leaving it's host body. There is a clear distinction between observing that a body has ceased to conduct electricity and recording the transference of that energy. He then cited a Dr. Konstantin Korotkov who supposedly captured this transference using gas discharge visualization. The pseudoscience was easily dismissed after my friend was unable to find this miraculous photograph. I stated that modern science has already used EMF sensors in the same space a dying body occupied to measure an increase of electrical energy in that space and that study was inconclusive. Proving E is no longer in A doesn't prove E is in or at B.

One day an EMF probe that is capable of measuring all electric energy within the ionosphere will be built or even a probe that can detect any energy that electricity can translate into. What if after a horrible disaster of some kind a thousand lives are lost
and said probe measures this loss of energy but doesn't detect any increase of energy, then what? Would science recant and state that the law of conservation is still a theory with exceptions as the scientific method would demand or would people continue to perpetuate faith in science? Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel.'

I would love to catalog all instances both canon and non-canon in Star Trek where this "law" is disregarded or ignored to see if those instances are plausible. Your help is appreciated.

 

[sojourner]

I would think that any electrical charge in the body would get converted to heat energy and slowly bleed off as the body cools.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I read that twice and still have no idea what this thread is about.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

I would think that any electrical charge in the body would get converted to heat energy and slowly bleed off as the body cools.

No, the heat that results in a corpse rotting is a side effect of bacteria digesting the organic material.
Electrical charge in an organism (for example in the nerve tissue) is always caused by ions, not by free electrones or protons. These ions simply get eaten with the tissue by scavengers (from bacteria to vultures) and re-used in their own bodies.
So, in a matter of speaking your bodily matter is immortal.

The pure energy (i.e. the body's warmth) gets conserved as well, in the classical sense: it radiates away (it's infrared radiation, after all) and heats the surroundings of the body. Usually, this takes place before burial so that it seeps into the ground, the air or - in case the person drowned - into the water.

An interesting and not commonly known fact is that all organisms also emit energy and matter in the form of bio-photons. However, since only living tissue does that, it's no factor anymore in the energy household of a dead body. I just brought it up for reasons of completeness. (Plus it was my thesis' topic )

 

[JarodRussell]

What is a "bio-photon" supposed to be?

 

[YellowSubmarine]

What is a "bio-photon" supposed to be?

Photons that are generated by biological processes such as bioluminescence, although it refers to the rest of them. All light that a biological organism emits that is not a result of the body heat, which every organism does emit. You not only emit infrared light because you're hot (which helps with night vision devices), but you also emit additional light because there are biochemical processes that emit it. Or something.

 

[JarodRussell]

So photons generated by my toaster are toast-photons?

 

[Australis]

I read that twice and still have no idea what this thread is about.

Life after death.

 

[Gov Kodos]

I was having a debate over the status of the law of conservation of energy with a friend of mine. I stated that death is an exception to said law. His premise was that if energy can only be transferred into another form of energy, any electrical charge that dissipates from that host body most be transferred somewhere. I then explained to him that the human race as we know it has yet to record the electricity leaving it's host body. There is a clear distinction between observing that a body has ceased to conduct electricity and recording the transference of that energy. He then cited a Dr. Konstantin Korotkov who supposedly captured this transference using gas discharge visualization. The pseudoscience was easily dismissed after my friend was unable to find this miraculous photograph. I stated that modern science has already used EMF sensors in the same space a dying body occupied to measure an increase of electrical energy in that space and that study was inconclusive. Proving E is no longer in A doesn't prove E is in or at B.

One day an EMF probe that is capable of measuring all electric energy within the ionosphere will be built or even a probe that can detect any energy that electricity can translate into. What if after a horrible disaster of some kind a thousand lives are lost
and said probe measures this loss of energy but doesn't detect any increase of energy, then what? Would science recant and state that the law of conservation is still a theory with exceptions as the scientific method would demand or would people continue to perpetuate faith in science? Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel.'

I would love to catalog all instances both canon and non-canon in Star Trek where this "law" is disregarded or ignored to see if those instances are plausible. Your help is appreciated.

Can there be no science without faith in the existence of the universe as an ongoing phenomenon? Shouldn't science be questioning what keeps something that abruptly came to existence in a big bang could not as abruptly bring about an end, not unlike a cosmic sink hole? The energy of the universe started out of no where, so how can it be conserved> Is conservation only faith that non-existence waits?

 

[Stoo]

haha I have no idea what you're trying to say there but, just for the record, the Big Bang wasn't something abruptly coming to existence, just something rapidly expanding from a state of being very tiny and very hot\dense.

 

[Gov Kodos]

One that popped out of a black hole? Can one explode, I would think so. But wouldn't the energy have to go faster than light to do so? Are the laws of the universe made in that moment of escape from a superdense existence where the laws of our current universe would not apply? Your thoughts, Viva?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Is Ghostbusters closer to the truth?

 

[Gov Kodos]

Is Ghostbusters closer to the truth?

I or II?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Is Ghostbusters closer to the truth?

I or II?

We should probably consider each in turn. And—to remain objective and impartial—we shouldn't overlook the fact that Gene Roddenberry had various levels of involvement in Star Trek, ranging from lots to none (especially after he died, but maybe that's not so certain in light of the facts unveiled here). In any case, to err on the side of caution, we should probably consider at least each film and season of Trek to be a different animal (if not vegetable and mineral). There are also the GB shows to consider; a comparison matrix really suggests itself.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Such a matrix might result in crossing streams which might unleash a Beetlejuice factor of unparallelled proportions. Unless, there is some subspatial distortion in hyperspace which could create an entrance to an alternate universe that that might cause a cosmic implosion. Sounds risky.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Risk is our business.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Risk is our business.

That just lends itself to a need for a Ouija board, lest we make this Risk nothing more than a clandestine game of Battleship with reality itself as the prize. Is there a Clue to The game of Life?

 

[Stoo]

ok sorry I think I'm not taking enough drugs to follow whatever's going on here

 

[Silvercrest]

Such a matrix might result in crossing streams which might unleash a Beetlejuice factor of unparallelled proportions. Unless, there is some subspatial distortion in hyperspace which could create an entrance to an alternate universe that that might cause a cosmic implosion. Sounds risky.

It would be bad.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Such a matrix might result in crossing streams which might unleash a Beetlejuice factor of unparallelled proportions. Unless, there is some subspatial distortion in hyperspace which could create an entrance to an alternate universe that that might cause a cosmic implosion. Sounds risky.

It would be bad.

I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"