Energy, Energy, and Energy: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
· Machines would never run out of fuel.
· A ball may bounce higher than where it began.
· You could get “something from nothing,” breaking all predictability in physics.
![[Image: nl6EM0Y.jpeg]](https://i.imgur.com/nl6EM0Y.jpeg)
Energy is the ability to perform work or make a change. To put it simply, it's what causes events to occur, whether it's moving objects, producing heat, producing light, or powering machines. According to the law of conservation of energy, energy cannot be generated or destroyed, but only changes from one form to another. For instance, a battery converts chemical energy into electrical energy, which can then be used to produce light or heat. In a nutshell, energy doesn't vanish - it simply changes form.
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The reason energy is conserved is that the laws of physics remain constant at all times (time symmetry). To achieve that symmetry, energy conservation is necessary. Energy cannot simply appear or disappear because the laws of physics don't change with time, which is why the universe follows the same rules yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Due to nature's consistency and predictability, energy always transforms instead of being created or destroyed.
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Think about what would happen if energy were able to just appear or disappear:· Machines would never run out of fuel.
· A ball may bounce higher than where it began.
· You could get “something from nothing,” breaking all predictability in physics.
At the same time, the lack of energy would mean that becoming within all beings or things would be impossible, resulting in the absence of the law of kamma. Without energy, the fluctuations of dependent activities would be impossible to iterate since everything or every event is interdependent and co-appearing ad infinitum (the characteristics of emptiness).
Ultimately, a correlation exists between energy and emptiness. Looking through energy is the same as looking through emptiness; looking at emptiness is the same as looking at energy. From this comes the saying, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form”. The principle that applies is that seeing into form means seeing into matter, seeing into matter means seeing into energy, and seeing into energy means seeing into emptiness. Remember that an object can only emerge from energy and emptiness in a system, not from nothing.