I had always wondered why the planets keep spinning. Eventually I realized that there is no friction against the ground or an axis like there is for a wheel.
When I was eight, I wondered about frames of reference, like... why does this ball not move towards the back of the bus if I throw it upwards? Then I realized that it has the same velocity as me.
While the universe expands, useful energy decreases, but total energy is conserved. Energy stays the same, but entropy increases. An increase in entropy marks a decrease in the usefulness of the energy, and a progression towards one possible end state of the universe, a totally uniform cloud of particles at the same temperature.
Heavy elements are created by nuclear fusion. The death of a star (supernova!) seeds the local area with elements necessary for life. Scientists have found carbon based molecules in space.
I think it's at least 25% likely that the universe undergoes cycles of compression and expansion, and that stars, averaged in the long run, are born and die at the same rate. This last thing doesn't really mean anything cause it applies to any lifeforms, right?
Well, people have been making perpetual motion devices for like... centuries. But of course, they were all fake. Too bad.
Now about energy... What if we had ideally efficient fission and fusion processes? Would the reactions ever be able to just go back and forth? Nah. Like other processes, entropy increases. Well, the fusion process wouldn't produce nuclear fuel hardly ever. That stuff is really high proton.
Does energy have a mind of its own?
The way I (and most scientists) understand it, particles interact through the four forces, and energy is a measured quantity.
Idiots will tell you all day that quantum mechanics totally flips the world around into probabilistic nonsense, but I am telling you straight up that reality must be deterministic based only on the spatial arrangement and bodily kinetic (velocity and angular velocity) quantities of particles.
But um, light is pretty crazy, what is that shit?
First, God made light...
But along the same lines as your question, philosophers have often wondered....
Is there something it is like to be a rock?