Yes, it will create some additional potential energy.
That doesn't contradict strict conservation of energy - it just adds another energy source that has to be accounted for when balancing everything.
It might contradict the aphorism "energy is never created or destroyed", but I'm not sure that was ever science.
It's more fun to think about it in terms of thermodynamics. Can that extra energy be used to reverse the second law of thermodynamics? I'm guessing not - it's so diffuse that it's probably impossible to use it to reduce entropy. The math for actually doing those calculations is well beyond what I know, though, so I'll just say that one's no more than a guess.
chowells|5 years ago
That doesn't contradict strict conservation of energy - it just adds another energy source that has to be accounted for when balancing everything.
It might contradict the aphorism "energy is never created or destroyed", but I'm not sure that was ever science.
It's more fun to think about it in terms of thermodynamics. Can that extra energy be used to reverse the second law of thermodynamics? I'm guessing not - it's so diffuse that it's probably impossible to use it to reduce entropy. The math for actually doing those calculations is well beyond what I know, though, so I'll just say that one's no more than a guess.