(July 22, 2019 at 10:36 pm)polymath257 Wrote: The one set has a higher average kinetic energy than the other: you add up the the kinetic energy and divide by the number of atoms/molecules.
Yes, linear accelerators are smashing particles together to better learn the characteristics of their interaction (including how they form more complicated aggregations).
There are quantum particles. Such particles have properties, like spin, charge, momentum, energy, parity, mass, etc. Those properties determine how those particles interact with other particles. We are attempting to learn the specifics of those interactions. Note that energy is *one* of those properties. It is not, itself, fundamental in any way that is different than, say, charge, or spin.
But you can add just energy to the system. It is *something*.
Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble. - Joseph Campbell 
Militant Atheist Commie Evolutionist

Militant Atheist Commie Evolutionist