A bunch of really smart and hardworking French, German, and Hungarian physicists ‘proved’ Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, the famous E = mc². Basically, there was a lot of supercomputing that needed doing and not a lot of it getting done.

Einstein proposed his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905. The theory is “special” because, unlike his later Theory of General Relativity, it only accounts for special cases of motion. For example, you can’t compare a spinning reference frame (say, a carousel) to a stationary reference frame (the screaming kids in line). Einstein later refined his idea of relativity between 1905 and 1915 and proposed the General Theory of Relativity, which works in all reference frames (more after the jump). To put everything into perspective, consider this: the first production Model T was built in 1908. Before computers, particle accelerators, the internet, or automobiles, this man had unraveled the inner workings of the universe with his brain and a chalkboard. The article was on the Discovery Channel’s Science page.

Nov. 21, 2008 — It’s taken more than a century, but Einstein’s celebrated formula e= mc2 has finally been corroborated, thanks to a heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian physicists.

A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France’s Center for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world’s mightiest supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms.

According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons [are comprised of] smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are bound by gluons.

The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 percent?

The answer, according to the study published in the journal Science this week, comes from the energy from the movements and interactions of quarks and gluons.

In other words, energy and mass are equivalent, as Einstein proposed in his Special Theory of Relativity….

The General Theory of Relativity predicts that things with mass bend the fabric of space-time. And that’s about as blunt as it gets, unfortunately. Think of space-time as a bed sheet pulled taut between two people. Now if you place a ball on the sheet, it deforms a little bit. The universe is kind of like that, except the sheet is woven from the imperceptible fabrics of space and time, it’s 4-dimensional (height, width, depth, and time), and really really really big. It’s huge. The General Theory of Relativity was “proved” by the observation of a solar eclipse in 1919. If matter bends space-time, a really massive object like the moon should bend it a lot, right?. And that’s what you see in photos of eclipses — light from the sun “bending” around the moon. Since light always moves in straight lines, we can infer that the fabric of the universe is itself bending around the moon.

Tags: Einstein

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