"It was great to listen to one of the greatest minds of recent times.. now if people like this idiot could shut the hell up"While I agree that that guy is clearly an idiot, he's partially correct about some of the background to the mass-energy equivalent theorem. Einstein didn't come up with it first. Newton first suggested the idea in "Optiks". Preston made predictions that gave the same basic estimations of the values (although he didn't express it as an equation). Poincaré worked out that, for radiation, mv = (E/c^2)c, although he didn't refine that any further by figuring out that if v=c then E=mc^2. De Pretto published the fact that E=mc^2 in two publications two years before Einstein did, but died before the work was translated out of his native Italian. Hasenöhrl worked out the basics of the equation through experiment a year before Einstein published, but he had his measurements wrong and couldn't get the exact equation down pat. Einstein actually worked out that L=mc^2 (where L is light), and then speculated that E=mc^2. He had no proof to back it up for anything but light, and his proof for light was sketchy at best. He mixed up relativistic energy and classical energy, and so forth. He got it right from several angles, but the paper mainly was to show some new lines of thinking on the problem, not to present a solution. Like I said, he failed to show the general case for E instead of L. Two years later, Planck criticized Einstein's paper because he felt Einstein assumed what he set out to prove and that the paper was fatally flawed because of this sort of thing. And finally, in 1906, Einstein published a paper where he applied E=mc^2, and in that paper he gave credit to Poincaré for the mass energy equivalence for electromagnetic radiations.Anyway, the point is that Einstein was not the first to think of it nor the first to actually express it in that form. Relativity, on the other hand, was something very different than previous attempts at it and he's well deserving of the credit for that.
micromauseOct 19, 2005
Good s**t =D
ottoOct 19, 2005
"It was great to listen to one of the greatest minds of recent times.. now if people like this idiot could shut the hell up"While I agree that that guy is clearly an idiot, he's partially correct about some of the background to the mass-energy equivalent theorem. Einstein didn't come up with it first. Newton first suggested the idea in "Optiks". Preston made predictions that gave the same basic estimations of the values (although he didn't express it as an equation). Poincaré worked out that, for radiation, mv = (E/c^2)c, although he didn't refine that any further by figuring out that if v=c then E=mc^2. De Pretto published the fact that E=mc^2 in two publications two years before Einstein did, but died before the work was translated out of his native Italian. Hasenöhrl worked out the basics of the equation through experiment a year before Einstein published, but he had his measurements wrong and couldn't get the exact equation down pat. Einstein actually worked out that L=mc^2 (where L is light), and then speculated that E=mc^2. He had no proof to back it up for anything but light, and his proof for light was sketchy at best. He mixed up relativistic energy and classical energy, and so forth. He got it right from several angles, but the paper mainly was to show some new lines of thinking on the problem, not to present a solution. Like I said, he failed to show the general case for E instead of L. Two years later, Planck criticized Einstein's paper because he felt Einstein assumed what he set out to prove and that the paper was fatally flawed because of this sort of thing. And finally, in 1906, Einstein published a paper where he applied E=mc^2, and in that paper he gave credit to Poincaré for the mass energy equivalence for electromagnetic radiations.Anyway, the point is that Einstein was not the first to think of it nor the first to actually express it in that form. Relativity, on the other hand, was something very different than previous attempts at it and he's well deserving of the credit for that.
Closed AccountOct 19, 2005
"E=mV^2"E=mC^2
b0b0Oct 19, 2005
Despite that formula's following, that is probably the clearest explanation that I've heard yet.
himynameiznateOct 19, 2005
You'd think the smartest guy in the universe would speak english a little better.;)
Closed AccountOct 19, 2005
kick ass and easy to understand.
sirbriggsOct 20, 2005
He's lying.
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