Collaborators

How does energy work?

Energy levels are a factor here. It's basic, the higher the level, the more energy is in a system. Makes sense, wood for example has a high level. It can be burnt, a process that releases the chemical energy stored in its molecular bonds, and turns it into heat. The ash left from it is at a lower energy level than the wood before. Stability is an important factor here as well. Everything in the universe moves towards its ground status, in which it's completely stable, and has the least amount of potential energy as possible. For example, a ball on a hill is very unstable, and has a lot of potential energy. When it is disturbed, it rolls down the valley, and releases its potential energy as it goes down. At this point, it's at its ground status. It will remain like that. (of course, unless you remove it from there and put it back) Everything we know in this universe follows these two principals, even in quantum mechanics. Like everything, they want to be at the lowest energy level possible, known as a vacuum state. This has nothing to do with the space vacuum, it's just called this way because scientists suck at naming things. Perhaps all has reached vacuum status except one. The Higgs Field is not stable, but meta-stable, a fancy way to say it acts stable but really isn't. It would be a false vacuum. The Higgs Field gives everything its mass, which is how almost everything works. But we are not here to talk about what would happen if it was in a false vacuum, but actually, we will sort of, since it helps us view how ground status works. Say the ball is not actually at ground status, and the valley is actually up high, and there is a much larger valley up the other side of the valley it is located in. This means it still has a lot of potential energy to release. It's like a log covered in gasoline. A random spark like quantum tunneling might release all this energy.

Source: https://youtu.be/ijFm6DxNVyI