It’s a sci-fi trope, but are “beings of pure energy” really possible?

Sorry about that - this is my first Ars video and I didn't think of it. Here's the transcript. Hope this helps!

Intro: I noticed a trend in science fiction. It seems like whenever an advanced alien civilization is shown, the really advanced ones, they always seem to convert themselves into pure energy. Becoming these energy beings is, apparently, the next step in the advancement, or evolution, of a civilization.

This happens everywhere: In Star Trek, the Organians were originally “corporeal” like us, but have evolved to give up their physical bodies. And the Q may once have been like us as well, but they claim to have evolved into a state of “ultimate purity”. In Babylon 5, the first sentient being in the Universe has long since become an energy being, and stays around to watch over humanity; and in the distant future, we see that humans have become energy beings ourselves. In Stargate, the Ancients, a human civilization that built the Stargates, abandoned their technology to “ascend” - becoming beings of pure energy. In Doctor Who, the Time Lords considered converting themselves into a state of pure consciousness while bringing an end to time.

And it’s not just advanced civilizations. Energy beings are everywhere in fiction. Sometimes individuals can become energy beings when they achieve a higher state of awareness, like Daniel Jackson in Stargate and Kes in Star Trek: Voyager. Some became such by accident, like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen, and even Superman for a while. Some have just always been energy beings, like Key from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.

It’s so ubiquitous, it’s almost like this is our cultural idea of our far future. The most advanced civilizations and beings ultimately convert themselves into energy. Is this what we think we will become?

I began to wonder: why is this idea so common? Is this really what our future looks like? Can we ever convert ourselves into energy beings? Are energy beings possible at all? And if not, where does the idea come from?

To find out, I spoke to Professor Saurabh Jha, an astrophysicist at Rutgers University. Professor Jha studies supernovae, and was part of the high-z supernova search team, which was the first to report that the Universe’s acceleration is expanding.

Question: So do you think it's possible for a lifeform to exist that's made completely out of energy?

Prof. Jha: Not the way we really define energy in physics. Things can have energy -- matter particles can have energy, there are different kinds of energy. They can have energy of motion, that's kinetic energy. They have energy just for existing, having mass; it's something called rest mass energy that Einstein famously showed in E=mc^2. So mass can be converted into energy of another kind. It can give kinetic energy to another particle, for example.

The Universe is richer than our imaginations often, so it's hard to say definitely that something's impossible. But there are some issues with just having a being made of pure light. We know that light in a vacuum always travels with a certain speed, the speed of light. So now there's a question: is your energy being made of light photons that are moving out in many different directions? Or maybe, like a laser beam, all in the same direction? Is that a being?

We know the interactions; we have a theory for how light behaves, and it's been tested and it's pretty specific, and so we know what light can do. We know that light is a result of oscillating electric and magnetic fields, so we know how it behaves in space. We can change the behavior of light, for example when it's not in the vacuum of space, when it's in materials. Like in water, the photons actually propagate more slowly as they bump into these water molecules. So the speed can change. And we even have experiments where we can really slow down light in materials, even make light sort of stand still in the material.

So you could imagine that there are beings that communicate with light, or their neurons, instead of sending electrical signals, send light signals in their brains or something. But it's still light that's traveling between other things that are made of matter.

Q: Let's say that somehow in a billion years we decide to turn ourselves into energy beings. Is there an advantage to that? What would be the point?

Prof. Jha: There are clearly obvious disadvantages of our current biological forms. We're very frail, we have a limited lifetime. Humans can basically only survive in our birth state in a very thin shell around the surface of the Earth.

There are substances in the Universe, for example matter, that can survive in many different contexts. So you could imagine that if you wanted to make us hardier, and live longer, maybe live forever -- well, people talk about taking the knowledge in a human brain and putting it in a computer, which could potentially last forever if you have the energy and resources to keep fixing it. Also those robot-type things could be more hardy and maybe even spaceworthy. They wouldn't need air, they'd only need a very little amount of power.

But it's still matter interacting with different kinds of energy in the form of light, or electrical signals or something like that.

Q: It seems pretty ubiquitous in science fiction that every advanced civilization eventually becomes energy beings. Where do you think that idea came from?

Prof. Jha: I can see the appeal. Like in Star Trek, the Q -- they can exist anywhere, they can transport themselves instantaneously anywhere. There's also physics problems with that -- moving faster than the speed of light and things like that. And they don't have to exist in any particular form, and that idea of transcending all boundaries -- which is a little bit, you know, the theme of a lot of science fiction IS transcending boundaries. And they're trying to figure out what is universal for humans, and what might be universal for all life.

Maybe there are new particles we haven't discovered yet because they're so rare in nature, or maybe short-lived or something, and then maybe someone will learn about those particles and figure out how to make them long-lived or create them in some way. So maybe there will be some other kind of beings possible that have a lot of advantages compared to the normal matter that we deal with.

But the idea of energy, as we've discussed, doesn't really make sense in that same context.

Sorry about that - this is my first Ars video and I didn't think of it. Here's the transcript. Hope this helps!

Intro: I noticed a trend in science fiction. It seems like whenever an advanced alien civilization is shown, the really advanced ones, they always seem to convert themselves into pure energy. Becoming these energy beings is, apparently, the next step in the advancement, or evolution, of a civilization.

This happens everywhere: In Star Trek, the Organians were originally “corporeal” like us, but have evolved to give up their physical bodies. And the Q may once have been like us as well, but they claim to have evolved into a state of “ultimate purity”. In Babylon 5, the first sentient being in the Universe has long since become an energy being, and stays around to watch over humanity; and in the distant future, we see that humans have become energy beings ourselves. In Stargate, the Ancients, a human civilization that built the Stargates, abandoned their technology to “ascend” - becoming beings of pure energy. In Doctor Who, the Time Lords considered converting themselves into a state of pure consciousness while bringing an end to time.

And it’s not just advanced civilizations. Energy beings are everywhere in fiction. Sometimes individuals can become energy beings when they achieve a higher state of awareness, like Daniel Jackson in Stargate and Kes in Star Trek: Voyager. Some became such by accident, like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen, and even Superman for a while. Some have just always been energy beings, like Key from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.

It’s so ubiquitous, it’s almost like this is our cultural idea of our far future. The most advanced civilizations and beings ultimately convert themselves into energy. Is this what we think we will become?

I began to wonder: why is this idea so common? Is this really what our future looks like? Can we ever convert ourselves into energy beings? Are energy beings possible at all? And if not, where does the idea come from?

To find out, I spoke to Professor Saurabh Jha, an astrophysicist at Rutgers University. Professor Jha studies supernovae, and was part of the high-z supernova search team, which was the first to report that the Universe’s acceleration is expanding.

Question: So do you think it's possible for a lifeform to exist that's made completely out of energy?

Prof. Jha: Not the way we really define energy in physics. Things can have energy -- matter particles can have energy, there are different kinds of energy. They can have energy of motion, that's kinetic energy. They have energy just for existing, having mass; it's something called rest mass energy that Einstein famously showed in E=mc^2. So mass can be converted into energy of another kind. It can give kinetic energy to another particle, for example.

The Universe is richer than our imaginations often, so it's hard to say definitely that something's impossible. But there are some issues with just having a being made of pure light. We know that light in a vacuum always travels with a certain speed, the speed of light. So now there's a question: is your energy being made of light photons that are moving out in many different directions? Or maybe, like a laser beam, all in the same direction? Is that a being?

We know the interactions; we have a theory for how light behaves, and it's been tested and it's pretty specific, and so we know what light can do. We know that light is a result of oscillating electric and magnetic fields, so we know how it behaves in space. We can change the behavior of light, for example when it's not in the vacuum of space, when it's in materials. Like in water, the photons actually propagate more slowly as they bump into these water molecules. So the speed can change. And we even have experiments where we can really slow down light in materials, even make light sort of stand still in the material.

So you could imagine that there are beings that communicate with light, or their neurons, instead of sending electrical signals, send light signals in their brains or something. But it's still light that's traveling between other things that are made of matter.

Q: Let's say that somehow in a billion years we decide to turn ourselves into energy beings. Is there an advantage to that? What would be the point?

Prof. Jha: There are clearly obvious disadvantages of our current biological forms. We're very frail, we have a limited lifetime. Humans can basically only survive in our birth state in a very thin shell around the surface of the Earth.

There are substances in the Universe, for example matter, that can survive in many different contexts. So you could imagine that if you wanted to make us hardier, and live longer, maybe live forever -- well, people talk about taking the knowledge in a human brain and putting it in a computer, which could potentially last forever if you have the energy and resources to keep fixing it. Also those robot-type things could be more hardy and maybe even spaceworthy. They wouldn't need air, they'd only need a very little amount of power.

But it's still matter interacting with different kinds of energy in the form of light, or electrical signals or something like that.

Q: It seems pretty ubiquitous in science fiction that every advanced civilization eventually becomes energy beings. Where do you think that idea came from?

Prof. Jha: I can see the appeal. Like in Star Trek, the Q -- they can exist anywhere, they can transport themselves instantaneously anywhere. There's also physics problems with that -- moving faster than the speed of light and things like that. And they don't have to exist in any particular form, and that idea of transcending all boundaries -- which is a little bit, you know, the theme of a lot of science fiction IS transcending boundaries. And they're trying to figure out what is universal for humans, and what might be universal for all life.

Maybe there are new particles we haven't discovered yet because they're so rare in nature, or maybe short-lived or something, and then maybe someone will learn about those particles and figure out how to make them long-lived or create them in some way. So maybe there will be some other kind of beings possible that have a lot of advantages compared to the normal matter that we deal with.

But the idea of energy, as we've discussed, doesn't really make sense in that same context.