APOD: The Antennae Galaxies in Collision (2010 Jul 18)

[Don Lund]

What's lost or destroyed in nuclear reactions is not what I'd call matter, but rather nucear binding energy. Yes, there is a mass equivalent to this energy via E=mc^2, so I suppose it all boils down to how you look at it. Perhaps it just doesn't "matter"...[/quote]

OOPS! Well, of course, this energy isn't lost or destroyed, just kinda rearranged. How do you edit this stuff, anyway?

[bystander]

How do you edit this stuff, anyway?

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[neufer]

What's lost or destroyed in nuclear reactions is not what I'd call matter, but rather nuclear binding energy. Yes, there is a mass equivalent to this energy via E=mc^2, so I suppose it all boils down to how you look at it. Perhaps it just doesn't "matter"...

Click to view full size image

This isn't a simply question of counting "fundamental particles."

The bound nuclei are legitimate particles of matter
with their own measurable rest masses.

Deuterium, tritium, helium-4 and neutron nuclei all have
measurable rest masses as determined by binding energies.

Fusion of deuterium with tritium creating helium-4,
freeing a neutron, and releasing 17.59 MeV of energy, =>
as an appropriate amount of mass converting to the kinetic
energy of the products, in agreement with E = Δmc²

QUEEN GERTRUDE: More matter, with less Art.

[mg]

So what would happen to an individual on a planet going through this evolution??

[neufer]

So what would happen to an individual on a planet going through this evolution??

Which individual?

[Poddy]

I have often wondered if the (hubble) pictures are processed somehow to give real perspective (ie depth cueing as it is not in '3D') or if the perspective effect is a fantasy created by the 'false colour' processing?

[Chris Peterson]

I have often wondered if the (hubble) pictures are processed somehow to give real perspective (ie depth cueing as it is not in '3D') or if the perspective effect is a fantasy created by the 'false colour' processing?

I'm not sure what "perspective effect" you are seeing. People sometimes see different illusions. There has been no special processing applied to this image (or any HST images I'm aware of) to produce a sense of perspective, and this image doesn't use a false color palette. It was taken through filters that allow its final appearance to reasonably approximate its actual colors, assuming the eye were sensitive enough to see them. In other words, this image shows an object as it really is. But it is a flat image of a 3D object, and determining the 3D structure is difficult, ambiguous, and in places impossible.