Is bacteria and germs matter?

ID:188252
 
May 29 2004, 11:47 am
If it is then i wanna know lol ive always had this question
May 29 2004, 12:40 pm
Both bacteria and germs are plural, so surely you mean "Are bacteria and germs matter?" and not "If it is..." but "If they are..." - And yes, they are matter. If they were anti-matter or energy we'd all be in for a bit of trouble!

~Ease~
May 29 2004, 1:31 pm
In response to Ease
so if things kill the germs or bacteria thats not possible because of law of conservation of matter?
May 29 2004, 1:39 pm
In response to Strawgate
No, It just kills them, it doesn't destroy thier matter.
May 29 2004, 4:50 pm
In response to Strawgate
It's not impossible to destroy matter. However, you will always get an amount of energy out of it, dictated by E=mc^2, where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the speed of light.
May 29 2004, 10:16 pm
In response to Garthor
My dad worked out from that calculation that if we could convert Mass into Energy (Einstein claimed it was possible - he just didn't know how) at a 100% efficiency (which is basically impossible) we could power the entire of the UK with just ONE Kilogram of anything! Although, a conversion rate would most likely be more about 10%, as our processes are almost never perfect, but think about that! Instead of hundreds of tonnes of precious fossil fuels and such being wasted each month, this would be 10KG, less than a QUARTER of a person, each YEAR for the whole of UK!

It would solve Fossil Fuel problems, sanitation and pollution problems, Greenhouse/Global Warming and probably some other stuff too! Unfortunately, we still don't have a method to do that, so that stuffs that!

~Ease~
May 30 2004, 1:44 am
In response to Ease
But when you destroy matter, isn't it gone forever? So we'd eventually run out of matter ( If we lived that long). But if we did make something like that, we should use it to get rid of garbage and condense polution into solid forms and get rid of it that way. Then, when there is just a little piece of earth left, we could move to Mars =D
May 30 2004, 2:15 am
In response to DarkCampainger
It is gone forever, but if you can turn Matter into Energy, why not vice versa? You're not really destroying the matter, just changing it's form. According to someone (I forgot who, probably Newton or Einstein) there will always be exactly the same amount of Energy + Matter in the Universe, and that Energy cannot be destroyed, only changed. Also, we would have to live for millions of millenia, and use much, much more energy than we do currently, to ever be in much threat of running out of Earth.

In fact, the Sun is much more likely to collapse long before we would run out of matter, and we'd be in much, much more trouble then!

~Ease~
May 30 2004, 2:22 am
In response to Ease
Yea, I guess. I hope we have fleets of starships by then =D
Beam me up scotty! (I always wanted to say that)

But it is possible for us to destroy the earth. Because we don't need to use it all up for it to blow. And, our energy use is in exponential growth because we keep growing (And now I don't get Social Security... Horray...). Well, see you there!

(By the way, did anyone you see the season finally of the startrek show (I don't remember which one, but it's the with the guy from quantum leap (another great show!)) it was on wedsay or thursday.. what a twist at the end.... )