9 Things To Say About Quantum Physics That Will Make You Sound Clever At Parties
6. "You're Just Made Of Heavy Light"
Sort of.
The idea behind this rather esoteric statement is based on the idea that all matter is just energy, according to Einstein anyway. Whilst this concept has at least one foot in the world of classical physics, it is important in the understanding of the spooky world of quantum.
In a way, this means that you're just made up of super-condensed light. But, if you've ever heard Einstein's famous equation E = mc^2, you'll already know this of course.
Let's break it down. The "E" of the equation represents energy, "m" is mass and the "c" represents the speed of light (or the "constant") and the ^2 means that the value is squared. The equation demonstrates that, the more energy an object has, its apparent mass will also increase. Simply put, the mass of an object increases relative to how fast it is moving, meaning that some of the energy of that motion is transformed into mass.
The idea that mass and energy are the same thing is so integral to physics, that most physicists when asked what the mass of an electron is, will give you an answer using units of energy.
The only reason why matter doesn't just transfer back into energy is to do with it "conserved quantities". There are a number of qualities in matter and energy that need to be preserved, you can't just go around destroying or creating matter and energy in the universe.
The same thing happens with quantum particles. A neutron can decay into a proton, electron and anti-neutrino, but seeing as these end products have less mass than a neutron, some of its mass is imparted to them as energy as they're basically the same thing.