magnets are a free source of energy (potential energy from attraction or retraction) that lasts forever, couldnt magnets be used to generate energy for example to power a car?

I've heard that most of the earth's energy comes from the sun (oil, wind, solar etc). Where does the rest of it come from?

I just watch a documentary about the nature of reality (horizon) there seems to be allot of excitement about the Higgs boson that apparently holds the key to mass. however I think I read somewhere that as a you approach the speed of light you gain mass and I'm sure iv read about mass being gained because of energy. does this no suggest that there is no such thing as mass and in fact mass does not exist and is just a measure of energy?

If you had stood outside looking up with your mouth open in the UK's worst snowstorm in the past 10 years, how long would it taken for the snow to fill your mouth with 200ml of water?

Would it have been more energy efficient to keep yourself warm all that time or to transport that 200ml of water to a tap in the area that the snowstorm happened?

Scientists said that the Big Bang was caused by the conversion of energy into mass, according to Einstein's E=mc2 formula. But where does this energy come from? And what actually triggered the Big Bang?

The current high price of electricity and gas makes us all careful about how much we use. But if an extremely cheap form of energy generation was discovered (e.g. nuclear fusion) so that people were no longer worried about their gas and electricity bills, what would be the effect on the earth of the resulting huge unfettered increase of energy usage?

From what i think i understand about the way the eye works, we have cells which can identify either red, blue or green light, which i guess corresponds to a certain wavelength (475nm, 510nm, 650nm), yet yellow light, for example, has a wavelength of 570nm. Is this picked up only partially by red and green receptors? If this is the case, technology using 3 colours of pixels in screens must be perfectly adapted to human eyes, yet a new type of television has been released with a yellow pixel as well. Would that offer any advantage to colour perception, or is it just smoke and mirrors?

If an object (say a space shuttle) is travelling at its terminal velocity, and you attmept to accelerate it (say, with rockets), what happens to the energy spent, as it can't be transferred to the velocity?

When I put baked beans in a jug in the microwave, and switch it on, the beans warm up, unsurprisingly. If I forget myself, overestimate the time needed, then shut the door with nothing in, then nothing warms up, because nothing is in there.

Where does the excess energy go? The electricity to generate the waves is being used regardless of whether there is anything to warm up or not. I understand that the waves will vibrate molecules in food if there is food there  to warm, but what if there is nothing there to warm? I can hear the machine buzzing as it generates waves, so it is still using electricity, but what has happened to this energy?

Peter Finan

Haworth

West Yorkshire