• Question: what is matter made of and how was it made in the first place?

    Asked by 8hemy to MarkF, Mark, Michael, Panos, Sarah on 22 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Mark Fogg

      Mark Fogg answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      I’m afraid that is a complicated and important Physics question and not really one I would dare try and answer; my physics friends would just laugh at me. 😉

    • Photo: Panos Soultanas

      Panos Soultanas answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Hi 8hemy,

      Matter is made of chemical elements that combine to form molecules. Matter was created by the big bang. At least this is what many scientists believe. Matter is inter-related to energy. The two are inter-convertible i.e. matters can be converted to energy and energy canbe converted to matter. This is what the famous Einstein equation E=Mc2 says.

    • Photo: Michael Loughlin

      Michael Loughlin answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      made of atoms and subatomic particles and all came into being along with time itself at the big bang.
      And i have no idea what was before then…its something i puzzle about

    • Photo: Sarah Burl

      Sarah Burl answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      We had this question yesterday, so I assume you must be learning about it in class just now! Objects that take up space and have mass are called matter. It is made of atoms, molecules and all of these are made up of the 114 elements that date till today.

      See this website for more details, sorry I am not a physicist!
      http://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/textbook/whatismatter.html

    • Photo: Mark Travis

      Mark Travis answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Matter is anything that has a mass- so basically everything around us is matter!

      As to how much there was in the first place, I really don’t know- I am sure some physicists may be able to estimate this, but we don’t know where the universe ends, so I don’t think anyone can put an accurate prediction on how much matter is out there.

      On Earth at least, there are 5 kinds of matter. Solids, gas and liquids you have heard of, but there are two more- plasma (basically atoms are very hot and excited) and Bose-Einstein condensates (basically atoms that are very cold and unexcited). Bose-Einstein condensates were only discovered in 1995!

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