• Question:  When the universe was created in the Big Bang, a huge amount of energy was needed. According to one of the laws of the thermodynamics, energy can't be destroyed or created, therefore where did the energy come from? I have been wondering about this for a long time as if we could find out where the energy came from we might find a way to create an infinite energy source for our planet.

    Asked by to Nick, Deepak, Alan on 17 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Deepak Kar

      Deepak Kar answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      Very good question. The astrophysicists here may be able to explain it better, but I think the current theory is just before big bang, there were some unknown form of energy, which transformed into matter during the big bang. So, no, we probably cant create an infinite source of energy, sorry 🙁

    • Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons

      Alan Fitzsimmons answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      Good question! The conservation of energy is one of the foundations of modern physics, and was proven by an amazing scientist called Emmy Noether. Albert Einstein called her a genius, so I’m just agreeing 🙂

      OK, we’re talking about the start of the Universe here. Some scientists have speculated that maybe conservation of energy didn’t work right at the big bang itself, but that’s probably cheating! There’s another idea though, which is more likely. When we do the calculations, matter and some energy in the Universe is positive, but other energy is negative. It could be that if you add up all the matter and energy at instant of the big bang, it could come out as zero.

      This is a good day to think about this! Watch the news this evening about the big announcement coming from America about studies of the Big Bang.

    • Photo: Nick Wright

      Nick Wright answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      Good question, and a good idea too! Some people have speculated that conservation of energy didn’t apply during the Big Bang, and other people have considered there might have been negative energy created during the Big Bang that balanced out what we think of as ‘normal’ energy. Another possibility is that, like you suggested, there is a source of energy out there that caused the Big Bang and we might be able to tap into it. In fact about 15 years ago scientists discovered that the expansion of the Universe was being accelerated and suggested that this was being caused by a mysterious source of energy called ‘dark energy’. We still don’t fully understand this yet, or where it comes from, so they might be connected!

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