I know the idea may appear ridiculous at first, but after reading Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol it really got me thinking... Could thoughts have a very, miniscule mass? Then, through their miniscule gravity, they could have a really tiny affect on the real world? Is this possible???
No, they are bio-electric patterns between the synapses of your brain - they dont have mass per se, they are emergent properties of the process. The neurons and neurotransmitters involved in the process do have a mass, just like a cell has mass but electricity doesnt.
Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true. Napoleon Hill
Thoughts are physical, so yes. But they don't change the overall mass of the world, since they are made of the same things.
thoughts and memories...the way we perform things is more of the way in which neuronal connections have been formed rather than some random electric charges. when a danger signal comes in, an electrical impulse, definitely of probably a unique strength, it is more of the path through which it travels that matters than the strength of the current generated itself. And, many believe that human brain is incapable of producing any thoughts. What i think is that thoughts are some kind of beings from another dimension we are able to summon at will. Then again, what will is becomes a question! So, will probably is a being (again from another dimension) that is with us always!
Perhaps. After all, many thoughts are accorded gravitas Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I once asked the very same question. When I was finishing up my BS in physics, one of that last guest lectures I attended was about Maxwell's Demon and the ability do work with information. Keeping in mind this was a long time ago and I was never able to fully put this into context, the argument was made that useful information can do work, thus it must contain energy, whereas random information cannnot do work. A gedunken experiment followed in which we abstractly constructed a machine to demonstrate this principle. My take away was that buried in the entropy arguments is the notion of order, vs disorder, in the mind of the Demon. In order to have a thought, at some level there must be a more highly ordered state that requires energy to be achieved [formed]. This energy input must result in an increase in mass. So my seat-of-the-pants logic suggested that thoughts must have mass.
the interesting thing about thoughts though is that , thoughts , imagination ( a thought ) can produce a physical object , that on the without exists the ability to " picture " this object in the minds eye so it seems that thought and imagination work together to produce image(s) that help to understand the object but also to futher investigate this object
Thoughts are the consequence of neurons signalling to each other. Neurons signal to each other via propagation of a membrane potential along axons and chemical signalling via neurotransmitters and receptors at the synaptic connection between axons. Neurotransmitters are molecules with mass. Propagation of membrane potentials is achieved via a wave of influx and efflux of ions across the membrane. Ions have mass. So, using the above observations, I suppose you could say that thoughts have mass. The above neurotransmission processes are happening constantly for both conscious and unconscious brain processes. Those ions and molecules are there regardless of how many conscious thoughts we have at any given moment. So the answer to this part of your question is probably no.
Is the "thought" a direct consequence of the potentials, or the flow of the ions, or is this a chicken and egg problem and we can't think of one without the other? Probably no indeed. But as a technical matter, we have changing potentials? We can have varying degrees of brain activity, correct? And how are these potentials above related to EEGs [assuming they are]?
This topic is partly discussed under different posts: Is software physical?, Thinking and Philosophy and Command language of thinking . Basically, if we say thoughts have mass, we should also say that software has a mass.
