The Curse of E=mc2
By Tony Rothman
The most famous equation has a history that goes far beyond Albert Einstein, and a meaning that is far less straightforward than is commonly believed.
This Article From Issue
November-December 2021
Volume 109, Number 6
Page 360
Hollywood stars, one imagines, receive at breakfast each morning cartons overflowing with letters from adoring fans—or, more likely these days, collections of emails, Facebook posts, and Instagram comments—sorted by personal assistants into relevant categories: “gushing praise”; “everlasting devotion”; “marriage proposals”; and “autographed photo request (price list sent).”
QUICK TAKE
- Attempts to establish the equivalence between mass and energy long preceded Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity, with early investigations going back to the 1880s.
- Einstein’s famous 1905 relativity paper is valid only for low velocities, and in six further attempts he never succeeded in producing a universal derivation of E = mc2.
- In extended systems, one often gets the equation as E = 3/4 mc2, and debate continues even to this day on the best way to interpret or fix this strange result.
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