Notes

This story is, of course, meant as the great introduction to this 4th cycle. Which is all about Energy and Force. Two very difficult concepts to grasp or storify, but no less crucial to the core of the universe and what it means to live. Which is exactly why I wanted to tackle it relatively early in the Saga of Life.

Because what is Energy? In the world of the Saga, it’s a bunch of creatures (Enyrgias) that make stuff change. This makes it tangible, and fantastical, and allows easier storytelling.

In the real world, of course, there are no such blobs or creatures or particles. Energy is a made-up concept to explain our universe as best we can.

In physics, it’s often defined as “the ability to do work”. Something has energy if it is able to “do work” (on its own, without outside input). You can loosely equate this to “change”. Without energy, your body would never change. With energy, you are now able to change the position of your limbs and muscles, perhaps to kick a ball or carry a box.

In more philosophical terms, people sometimes say it’s just a “missing puzzle piece”. If we want our formulas to be correct, then we need to include energy as we understand it. Then it all works out; without it, none of our physics theories work.

(It’s similar to “dark matter”. The idea that there must be some invisible matter in the universe that we can’t measure or understand. Because, simply, if it isn’t there, then all the phenomena we see every day and rely on don’t work out in our formulas.)

Though, as usual, there are many exceptions and little strange phenomena when it comes to laws of physics.

Conservation of Energy

In most situations, this rule is true.

The universe was created with a certain amount of energy and matter, and this will never change. You can only grab some of the energy and convert it into something else.

As you’ll see throughout this cycle, the journey of (human) evolution is all about being able to grab more of it or convert it more efficiently. The energy has always been there; animals just became better at eating it and using it.

For example,

• A plant uses energy from sunlight to grow.
• Its produce ends up as food on your plate.
• You eat it. The mitochondria in your cells happily accept this food and convert it to energy.
• Now you have the energy to move around! Think! Do stuff!
• Voila: you’ve now converted “light energy” into “movement energy”. (Otherwise known as “kinetic energy”.)

You didn’t actually add more energy to the world. Nor did the world “lose energy” because you “spent” it on walking or thinking. You merely converted one type of energy to another.

In fact, energy is matter, and the other way around. You can convert the two into each other. Though that’s mostly theoretical. In practice, our energy conversions are too inefficient and we “lose” energy or matter to side-effects.

For example, if you turn on a light bulb, it also produces heat you probably didn’t want. It needs extra electricity just to waste it on becoming hot! But alas, our world is imperfect, and so are our inventions.

In practice, of course, Earth is just a tiny planet in a vast galaxy. As such, we don’t really care about energy that isn’t where we are, because we can’t use it anyway. Sunlight “adds” energy to our world because it comes from so far away. But the energy that sunlight “adds” to our plants and solar panels is energy that the sun itself has lost.

And so, yes, the sun will eventually die too. The energy it had will have been spread throughout the galaxy, some of it eagerly used by us to create electricity. Or just warmth. The implosion of our sun, however, is fortunately billions of years away.

Okay, so when is this law not true?

For example, when you look at quantum physics—particles so tiny you can’t even see them with the strongest microscope—all bets are off. This is a general rule. In quantum physics, energy can “temporarily” be gone or added, but it’s always given back at some point later.

Or when you look at black holes throughout the galaxy. These are so mysterious that we only have a good name for them and not much else to go on. All we know is that it sucks in energy and doesn’t give it back, as far as we can tell.

These are oddities, not well understood.

So far, physics has done just fine assuming this law. We don’t actually know what energy is. When we calculate it, we get a number and we don’t know what it actually represents. All we know, is that whatever happens, however the world changes, that number must stay the same. No energy is added, none is lost.

Honestly, I think the first few paragraphs of Feynman’s Lectures (a famous physician who was great at explaining stuff in easy terms) explain energy best: Feynman’s Lecture on Energy

Which kinds of energy are there?

The rest of this cycle obviously explores them all. I just wanted to remind you of a basic rule mentioned in the story.

All types of energy are related to movement.

I personally prefer to phrase it differently: all types of energy are related to position. (These statements are pretty identical, of course. Because, well, changing position = moving!)

You can imagine our entire universe as a field of points. A field of positions in three dimensions.

Gravity, to many, is understood as “things fall back down”. In reality, however, it is a field. The exact position of an object in that field determines how much gravity acts on it. If you place something at a different position—say, higher on a shelf—it now has a different position in that field and thus gravity acts on it differently. A book that falls from the highest shelf will use more energy and hit the ground harder, than one that falls from the lowest shelf.

That’s what the story illustrates. It’s another elusive concept called “potential energy”. The object itself isn’t actually moving, but because of its position in the world, it has the potential to be energized and move.

If you really want to dig into it, though, all energy is like that. For example,

• Heat Energy = the more particles randomly jitter, the hotter they are. In other words: their position and how it changes causes this type of energy.
• Elastic Energy = the further you stretch an elastic rubber band, the faster it “snaps back” when you let go. While holding it, the elastic doesn’t actually move. But because of its position in that field—stretched out from its natural position—it has the potential energy to snap back.
• Nuclear Energy = this is the result of the positions between those tiny particles inside atoms, and how they pull on each other.

That’s why I say all types of energy are about position in that field that covers the entire world.

But that’s just my view. Even today, we don’t really know what energy is and we’re not close to figuring it out.

All we know is that we need it to actually cause change. To live.

Mitochondria

As usual, much is uncertain. There are several theories, but so far they all converge on the same idea.

The world used to have simple cells for a while. They lived off of sunlight, which gave them just enough energy to survive and replicate.

Some of those cells changed. This happens randomly: any time a simple cell doubles there’s a chance mistakes are added to the new one, changing how it works. These new cells were far better at creating energy … but they needed the oxygen from the other bacteria. They couldn’t do it alone.

Then, through some sort of miracle, those two cells started to work together. Maybe this was gradual, like becoming “bacteria friends”. Maybe this was sudden, like this story: they ended up inside the other cells, squashed into it, and became a part of a bigger cell.

In any case, at some point the simple cells (“eukaryotes”) became complex cells (“prokaryotes”). It was a necessary step to, eventually, combine the cells into more complex animals that needed way more energy.

It’s also a step so unlikely that many think we won the lottery here and it’s why we haven’t found life on any other planet. They simply haven’t had this miracle clash of two cells working together.

Story Questions

Yes, as usual, this is the one story of the cycle that dives deep into some scientific concept. It has to sacrifice some tension or interesting scenes for it, and is a bit slower as a result.

I can’t really change that, because the world is mostly empty at this point. And I want some setup to keep later stories in the cycle more action-packed, even as they talk more about energy and physics and other stuff that isn’t exactly common knowledge.

I hope it’s still interesting and engaging to read.

Some might also be surprised by my choice to have the gods bound by the same laws. The gods also can’t create or remove energy. They must take it from somewhere to do their special magic.

This was an easy choice, though. It fit the Saga better (which is all about biology and its limits!), it was in my original notes for the Saga (written when I was twelve years old, but still), and it simply leads to better stories.

If gods could add energy at will … then they’d have no obstacles whatsoever in life! Everything could be solved by adding endless energy to themselves, or other beings, or objects, to do whatever they needed and teleport wherever they needed to be. Because energy is what causes all change in the world.

And if they could remove energy, then we’re always just one step away from someone accidentally killing the entire universe. Then they’d have no issue dispatching of Father, for that matter, as they’d just remove all energy from everywhere and that’s that.

This illustrates the general story issue of power creep. You never want something to be unbounded—to grow endlessly large or small—as that means obstacles are easy to solve. And then, when the next story starts, you need to come up with an even more ludicrous plot because your character has become so incredibly powerful!

Especially superhero stories have this kind of issue. When a superhero has acquired abilities like flying, invisibility, lasers from their eyes, immortality … then what could even threaten them? The end of the earth? The end of the universe next story? And then? ;)