I might as well warn you now that this is one of my pointless, meandering posts, usually an indication that I haven't the slightest idea what I'm scribbling about and so if you have better things to do with your time, like filling in your tax return or painting the mother-in-law's kitchen, then you would be better off doing that than reading this twaddle.
Anyway, according to 'our Albert' (as I always think of him) energy equals the speed of light squared usually expressed in the famous equation e=mc2. Immediately I begin to pick nits because whilst the measurement of either mass or energy might be 'equal', in and of themselves they are not because they are different things and so it is probably better for amateurs (like me) to think of their relationship as an equivalence. But given 'our Albert's' equation, one part of it irritates me like a pebble in my shoe - the speed of light multiplied by itself! Now that is not only a very exact number, but also a very specific number. I keep asking myself - why that number? - and why that number multiplied by itself? Don't misunderstand, I'm not one of those brave but foolhardy people trying to disprove 'our Albert's' theory which would be the equivalent not so much of David versus Goliath as David-less-arms-and-legs-and-strapped-in-a-wheelchair versus Goliath! But,as I have mentioned before, I am very wary of coincidence and somehow that very specific number is all too, well, neat!
I have been provoked into these lazy thoughts on energy by a recent news item which reported the death of a very old lady, 104-years of age, I believe, and whose relatives were told by her doctor that she didn't die of anything specific, she simply ceased to live, or perhaps another way to describe it is that she simply ran out of energy, that is, energy in the microbiological sense of the word. As we all know (do we not?) life is the "equivalence" of energy released at the microbiological level within the carcass that carries us around. Gradually, over the course of years the production of energy drops, hence the aging process we do so much to hold off. But, as I understand it (ie, not very well!) in the end that wretched 2nd Law will always prevail. However, in so far as I have grasped the theory of the 2nd Law, it states that in a closed system, that is a system not in receipt of fresh energy, energy itself loses force, for example heat dissipates into cold, movement into stasis and light into dark. But, dammit, my body is not a closed system, I keep shovelling mouthfulls of energy into it and yet I'm still knackered after my morning swim, and the aged and wrinkled form I try to avoid looking at in the bathroom mirror is me - SHLOCK-HORROR! So I wonder why the furnace which lies somewhere beneath my belly button is not doing what it damn well should do and used to do?!
It's all very complicated and my brain is hurting so I think I'll go and conserve some energy by having a nice lie down . . .
PS: Some of you swots might care to offer an explanations but be warned, words of more than two syllables are forbidden!