Science concludes that energy isn’t created or destroyed because it can be seen to take other forms. For example, when road friction slows down a car, its tires become hot and radiate heat, so kinetic energy is seen to become heat energy, just as steam engines are seen to convert heat energy into kinetic energy. Energy is then observed to take different forms, but with one notable exception.
Lifting an object takes energy that dropping it releases, but where does it go to or come from? There is no heat flow so it is said to have potential energy based on its position in a gravitational field. This balances the energy books to conserve energy, but where is potential energy stored?
For example, if a rocket blasts off into an earth orbit, where did the liftoff energy go? If it then floats off into space forever, where is that energy stored? Or if it crashes into Jupiter to release more energy than it took to leave earth, where did the extra energy come from? The current answer, that gravity gives and takes potential energy, assumes an unknown mechanism that invisibly stores and releases energy as needed.
In this model, energy is defined as the rate at which the quantum network transfers processing. Light then has radiant energy because it is a process spreading, and high frequencies spread it faster, so they have more energy, while low frequencies are heat energy. Radiant energy is then conserved because photons are never destroyed but just restart, as processing can.
Photons can also explain kinetic energy. When light shining on a solar sail makes it move, radiant energy is converted into kinetic energy. If the sail moves by acquiring photons that bias its distribution, kinetic energy is also based on photons. When objects collide, kinetic energy is conserved because the photons exchanged are constant, and nuclear energy from matter is also based on photons if matter arose from light. Physical events then restart photons in various forms, as light or matter, but photons are always conserved because they are immortal.
What then is potential energy? Potential energy is based on gravity, which Einstein concluded isn’t a force at all, so no energy is involved. It follows that potential energy isn’t a form of energy either, but just a device that allows energy to be conserved when actually, it isn’t.
Current physics has many conservation laws, of matter, charge, momentum, isospin, and quark flavor, but each is partial, as nuclear reactions don’t conserve matter, and weak interactions don’t conserve quark flavor. The conservation of energy is then also a partial law, because the expansion of space doesn’t conserve it, and it needs an invented potential energy to work. However the conservation of photons still works, as when a rocket leaves earth, no photons are lost, and when it crashes on Jupiter, no photons are created.
How then does the expansion of space affect this law? The answer is not at all. If all light was created by cosmic inflation, the number of photons there are hasn’t changed since the expansion of space stopped it. Expanding space changes the energy of our universe, but not the number of photons in it. Our universe conserves light because it came from it, but not energy because it is expanding. The first law of thermodynamics then isn’t universal, so is the second law the same?