Understanding E = mc2

Ed. note: A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing William Tucker speak at a conference in Washington, DC. His
explanation of E = mc2 was the best I had ever heard. Even better, Tucker explained how Einsteins equation applied to
renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro. His lecture was a revelation. It showed that the limits of renewable energy
have nothing to do with politics or research dollars, but rather with simple mathematics. During a later exchange of emails with
Tucker, I praised his lecture and suggested he write an article that explained E = mc2 and its corollary, E = mv2.
To my delight, he informed me that hed already written such an essay and he agreed that we could publish it in Energy Tribune.

I love this essay. And Im proud that Tucker has allowed us to run it.
-Robert Bryce

Prof. Albert Einstein delivers the 11th Josiah Willard Gibbs lecture at the meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science in the auditorium of the Carnegie Institue of Technology Little Theater at Pittsburgh, Pa., on Dec. 28,
1934. Photo by AP

When I was in college, I took a course in the great political philosophers. We studied them in order Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau,
Kant, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx.

In my mind, I had placed them with the historical eras they had influenced Hobbes and the 18th century monarchs, Locke and
the American Revolution, Rousseau and 19th century Romanticism, Kant and the 19th century nation-states, Marx and 20th
century Communism.

Then one day I saw a time-line illustrating when they had all lived and died. To my astonishment, each had lived a hundred years
before I had placed them in history. The implicated seemed clear. It takes about a hundred years for a new idea to enter history.

Almost exactly 100 years ago, Albert Einstein posited the equation E = mc2 in his Special Theory of Relativity. The equation
suggested a new way of describing the origins of chemical energy and suggested another source of energy that at that point was
unknown in history nuclear energy. Nuclear power made its unfortunate debut in history 40 years later in the form of an atomic
bomb. But 100 years later, Americans have not quite yet absorbed the larger implications of Einsteins equation a new form of
energy that can provide almost unlimited amounts of power with a vanishingly small impact on the environment.

E = mc2. Who has not heard of it? Even Mariah Carey named her last album after it. E stands for energy, m for mass, and c
is the speed of light thats easy enough. But what does it really mean? (The answer is not relativity.)

What E = mc2 says is that matter and energy are interchangeable. There is a continuum between the two. Energy can transform
into matter and matter can transform into energy. They are different aspects of the same thing.

This principal of the equivalence of energy and matter was a completely unexpected departure from anything that had gone
before. In the 18th century, Antoine Lavoisier, the great French chemist, established the Conservation of Matter. Performing very
careful experiments, such as burning a piece of wood, he found that the weight of the resulting gases and ashes were always
exactly equal to the weight of the original material. Matter is never created nor destroyed, it only changes form.

Then in the 19th century a series of brilliant scientists Count Rumford, Sadi Carnot, Rudolf Clausius, Ludwig Boltzman
established the same principal for energy. Energy can take many forms heat, light, motion, potential energy but
the quantity always remains the same. Energy is never created nor destroyed either.

Now at the dawn of the 20th century, Albert Einstein posited a third principal that united the other two in a totally unexpected
way. Einstein stated a Law of Conservation between matter and energy. Nothing like this had ever been imagined before. Yet the
important thing is that co-efficient the speed of light squared. That is a very, very large number, on the order of one quadrillion.

We really dont have a reference point for a factor of one quadrillion. We know what a trillion is thats the federal budget
deficit. But a quadrillion is still a bit beyond our ken. What it means, though, is that a very, very large amount of energy
transforms into a very, very small amount of matter and a very, very small amount of matter can transform into a very, very large
amount of energy.

Perhaps the way to understand the significance of Einsteins equation is to compare it to another equation, the formula for kinetic
energy:

Kinetic energy is the energy of moving objects, E once again standing for energy, m indicating mass and v representing
the velocity of the moving object. If you throw a baseball across a room, for example, its energy is calculated by multiplying the
mass of the ball times the square of its velocity perhaps 50 miles per hour.

The two formulas are essentially identical. When brought into juxtaposition, two things emerge:

1. For any given amount of energy, mass and velocity are inverselyrelated. For an identical amount of energy, the higher
velocity goes, the less mass is required and vice versa.

2. When compared to the velocities of moving objects in nature wind and water, for instance the co-efficient in
Einsteins equation is fifteen orders of magnitude larger the same factor of one quadrillion.

How is this manifested in everyday life? Most of what we are calling renewable energy is actually the kinetic flows of matter in
nature. Wind and water are matter in motion that we harness to produce energy. Therefore they are measured by the formula for
kinetic energy.

Lets start with hydroelectricity. Water falling off a high dam reaches a speed of about 60 miles per hour or 80 feet per second.
Raising the height of the dam by 80 or more feet cannot increase the velocity by more than 20 miles per hour. The only way to
increase the energy output is to increase the mass, meaning we must use more water.

The largest dams Hoover and Glen Canyon on the Colorado River -stand 800 feet tall and back up a reservoir of 250 square
miles. This produces 1000 megawatts, the standard candle for an electrical generating station. (Lake Powell, behind Glen
Canyon, has silted up somewhat and now produces only 800 MW.)
Environmentalists began objecting to hydroelectric dams in the 1960s precisely because they occupied such vast amounts of land,
drowning whole scenic valleys and historic canyons. They have not stopped objecting. The Sierra Club, which opposed
construction of the Hetch-Hetchy Dam in Yosemite in 1921, is still trying to tear it down, even though it provides drinking water
and 400 megawatts of electricity to San Francisco. Each year more dams are now torn down than are constructed as a result of
this campaign.

Wind is less dense than water so the land requirements are even greater. Contemporary 50-story windmills generate 1- 1/2 MW
apiece, so it takes 660 windmills to get 1000 MW. They must be spaced about half a mile apart so a 1000-MW wind farm
occupies 125 square miles. Unfortunately the best windmills generate electricity only 30 percent of the time, so 1000 MW really
means covering 375 square miles at widely dispersed locations.

Tidal power, often suggested as another renewable resource, suffers the same problems. Water is denser than wind but the tides
only move at about 5 mph. At the best locations in the world you would need 20 miles of coastline to generate 1000 MW.

What about solar energy? Solar radiation is the result of an E = mc2 transformation as the sun transforms hydrogen to helium.
Unfortunately, the reaction takes place 90 million miles away. Radiation dissipates with the square of the distance, so by the time
solar energy reaches the earth it is diluted by almost the same factor, 10-15. Thus, the amount of solar radiation falling on a one
square meter is 400 watts, enough to power four 100-watt light bulbs. Thermal solar large arrays of mirrors heating a fluid
can convert 30 percent of this to electricity. Photovoltaic cells are slightly less efficient, converting only about 25 percent. As a
result, the amount of electricity we can draw from the sun is enough to power one 100-watt light bulb per card table.

This is not an insignificant amount of electricity. If we covered every rooftop in the county with solar collectors, we could
probably power our indoor lighting plus some basic household appliances during the daytime. Solars great advantage is that it
peaks exactly when it is needed, during hot summer afternoons when air conditioning pushes electrical consumption to its annual
peaks. Meeting these peaks is a perennial problem for utilities and solar electricity can play a significant role in meeting the
demand. The problem arises when solar enthusiasts try to claim solar power can provide base load power for an industrial society.
There is no technology for storing commercial quantities of electricity. Until something is developed which seems unlikely
wind and solar can serve only as intermittent, unpredictable resources.

There is only so much energy we can draw from renewable sources. They are limited, either by the velocities attained, or by the
distance that solar energy must travel to reach the earth. So is there anyplace in nature where we can take advantage of that c2
co-efficient and tap transformations of matter into energy? There is one that we have used through history. It is called
chemistry.

Chemical energy is commonly described in terms of valences. A sodium atom has a valence of +1, meaning it is missing an
electron in its outer shell. Meanwhile, a chlorine atom has a valence of -1, meaning it has an extra electron. Together they mate
to form sodium chloride (table salt). All chemical reactions are either endothermic or exothermic, meaning energy is either
absorbed or released in the process. The Bunsen burner in chemistry class is a way of adding energy to a reaction. The other thing
that can happen occasionally in chemistry lab is a sudden release of energy called an explosion.

The great achievement of 20th century quantum physics has been to describe chemical reactions in terms of E = mc2.

When we burn a gallon of gasoline, one-billionth of the mass of the gasoline is completely transformed into energy. This
transformation occurs in the electron shells. The amount is so small that nobody has ever been able to measure it. Yet the energy
release is large enough to propel a 2000-pound automobile for 30 miles a remarkable feat when you think of it.

Still, electrons make up only 0.01 percent of the mass of an atom. The other 99.99 percent is in the nucleus of the atom. And so
the question arose, would it be possible to tap the much greater amount of energy stored in the nucleus the way we tap the energy
in the electrons through chemistry?

For a long time many scientists doubted it could be done. Einstein himself was skeptical, saying that splitting an atom would be
like trying to hunt birds at night in a country where there arent many birds. But other pioneering scientists Enrico Fermi,
George Gamov, Lise Meitner and Leo Szilard discovered it could be done. By the late 1930s it had become clear that energy in
unprecedented quantity could be obtained by splitting the unstable uranium atom.

Unfortunately, World War II pre-empted the introduction of nuclear power. This is a historical tragedy. The atom bomb stands in
the same relation to nuclear energy as gunpowder stands to fire. While gunpowder has played an important role in history, fires
role has been far more essential. Would we want to give up fire just because it led to guns? Yet the atom bomb continues to cast a
shadow over the equally important discovery of nuclear energy.

The release of energy from splitting a uranium atom turns out to be 2 million times greater than breaking the carbon-hydrogen
bond in coal, oil or wood. Compared to all the forms of energy ever employed by humanity, nuclear power is off the scale. Wind
has less than 1/10th the energy density of wood, wood half the density of coal and coal half the density of octane. Altogether they
differ by a factor of about 50. Nuclear has 2 million times the energy density of gasoline. It is hard to fathom this in light of our
previous experience. Yet our energy future largely depends on grasping the significance of this differential.

One elementary source of comparison is to consider what it takes to refuel a coal plant as opposed to a nuclear reactor. A 1000-
MW coal plant our standard candle is fed by a 110-car unit train arriving at the plant every 30 hours 300 times a year.
Each individual coal car weighs 100 tons and produces 20 minutes of electricity. We are currently straining the capacity of the
railroad system moving all this coal around the country. (In China, it has completely broken down.)

A nuclear reactor, on the other hand, refuels when a fleet of six tractor-trailers arrives at the plant with a load of fuel rods once
every eighteen months. The fuel rods are only mildly radioactive and can be handled with gloves. They will sit in the reactor for
five years. After those five years, about six ounces of matter will be completely transformed into energy. Yet because of the
power of E = mc2, the metamorphosis of six ounces of matter will be enough to power the city of San Francisco for five years.

This is what people finds hard to grasp. It is almost beyond our comprehension. How can we run an entire city for five years on
six ounces of matter with almost no environmental impact? It all seems so incomprehensible that we make up problems in order
to make things seem normal again. A reactor is a bomb waiting to go off. The waste lasts forever, what will we ever do with it?
There is something sinister about drawing power from the nucleus of the atom. The technology is beyond human capabilities.

But the technology is not beyond human capabilities. Nor is there anything sinister about nuclear power. It is just beyond
anything we ever imagined before the beginning of the 20th century. In the opening years of the 21st century, it is time to start
imagining it.

William Tucker is the author, most recently, of Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End
Americas Energy Odyssey.

- See more at: http://www.energytribune.com/2771/understanding-e-

What if you traveled faster than

mc2#sthash.wkf0oIrm.dpuf

the speed of light?

by William Harris
 Sci Fi Science II: Approach Light Speed

How would we be able to travel fast enough to get across the galaxy? Use Jupiter to propel us, of course! Listen in
as Cornell professor Mason Peck explains how we exactly we might do that.

Science Channel

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When we were kids, we were amazed that Superman could travel faster than a speeding bullet. We could
even picture him, chasing down a projectile fired from a weapon, his right arm outstretched, his cape
rippling behind him. If he traveled at half the bullet's speed, the rate at which the bullet moved away from
him would halve. If he did indeed travel faster than the bullet, he would overtake it and lead the way. Go,
Superman! In other words, Superman's aerial antics obeyed Newton's views of space and time: that the
positions and motions of objects in space should all be measurable relative to an absolute, nonmoving
frame of reference.

In the early 1900s, scientists held firm to the Newtonian view of the world. Then a German-born
mathematician and physicist by the name of Albert Einstein came along and changed everything. In 1905,
Einstein published his theory of special relativity, which put forth a startling idea: There is no preferred
frame of reference. Everything, even time, is relative. Two important principles underpinned his theory.
The first stated that the same laws of physics apply equally in all constantly moving frames of reference.
The second said that the speed of light -- about 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per
second) -- is constant and independent of the observer's motion or the source of light. According to
Einstein, if Superman were to chase a light beam at half the speed of light, the beam would continue to
move away from him at exactly the same speed.
These concepts seem deceptively simple, but they have some mind-bending implications. One of the
biggest is represented by Einstein's famous equation, E = mc, where E is energy, m is mass and c is the
speed of light. According to this equation, mass and energy are the same physical entity and can be
changed into each other. Because of this equivalence, the energy an object has due to its motion will
increase its mass. In other words, the faster an object moves, the greater its mass. This only becomes
noticeable when an object moves really quickly. If it moves at 10 percent the speed of light, for example,
its mass will only be 0.5 percent more than normal. But if it moves at 90 percent the speed of light, its
mass will double.

As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass rises precipitously. If an object tries to travel 186,000
miles per second, its mass becomes infinite, and so does the energy required to move it. For this reason,
no normal object can travel as fast or faster than the speed of light.

That answers our question, but let's have a little fun on the next page and modify the question slightly.

Almost As Fast As the Speed of Light?

We covered the original question, but what if we tweaked it to say, "What if you traveled almost as fast as
the speed of light?" In that case, you would experience some interesting effects. One famous result is
something physicists call time dilation, which describes how time runs more slowly for objects moving
very rapidly. If you flew on a rocket traveling 90 percent of light-speed, the passage of time for you would
be halved. Your watch would advance only 10 minutes, while more than 20 minutes would pass for an
Earth-bound observer.

You would also experience some strange visual consequences. One such consequence is called
aberration, and it refers to how your whole field of view would shrink down to a tiny, tunnel-shaped
"window" out in front of your spacecraft. This happens because photons (those exceedingly tiny packets
of light) -- even photons behind you -- appear to come in from the forward direction. In addition, you would
notice an extreme Doppler effect, which would cause light waves from stars in front of you to crowd
together, making the objects appear blue. Light waves from stars behind you would spread apart and
appear red. The faster you go, the more extreme this phenomenon becomes until all visible light from
stars in front of the spacecraft and stars to the rear become completely shifted out of the known visible
spectrum (the colors humans can see). When these stars move out of your perceptible wavelength, they
simply appear to fade to black or vanish against the background.

Of course, if you want to travel faster than a speeding photon, you'll need more than the same rocket
technology we've been using for decades. Perhaps pulling on blue tights and a red cape isn't such a far-
fetched idea after all.

What if you fell into a black hole?

by William Harris
 The Unfolding Universe: Supermassive Black Holes

Join Discovery's "Unfolding Universe" team as astronomers investigate supermassive black holes.

Discovery

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When Alice falls into the rabbit hole, she experiences a host of "curio user and curio user" phenomena.
She gets smaller, she gets bigger, she almost drowns in a sea of her own tears and she meets an
assembly of strange creatures. As it turns out, falling into a black hole may rival the strange experiences
described by Lewis Carroll in his classic fantasy. Unlike Alice, however, who emerges from her
adventures no worse for the wear, a person who journeys into one of the universe's most mysterious
objects is not likely to fare so well. To understand why, it will help to define what a black hole is and how it
interacts with the universe around it.

Astronomers have only observed black holes indirectly, yet they can paint a clear picture, albeit one
based on circumstantial evidence. They feel certain, for example, that black holes indicate regions where
matter has been compressed into an infinite density. The gravity of such a region is so strong that nothing
can escape its inexorable pull, not even light. As matter and light fall into the super dense region, X-rays
and other forms of electromagnetic energy get blasted into space. It's this cosmic ejecta that alerts
astronomers to the existence of these mysterious monsters.

Like monsters we can see, black holes come in different sizes. Astronomers measure this using
something known as the Schwarzschild radius. That radius describes the size of the event horizon, the
spherical boundary of a black hole. The greater the object's mass, the larger its event horizon and the
larger its radius. Regardless of how massive it is, a black hole's center point is what astronomers call
a singularity -- a place where matter is infinitely dense.

Of course, you'll have to find one of these objects if you're going to fall into it. We'll search for one next.

Back in Black

Astronomers now believe black holes lie at the centers of most galaxies. They classify these beasts
as supermassive black holes because each one may have a maximum mass equivalent to billions of
suns. Stellar black holes are the remains of dying stars that have collapsed upon themselves. They're
smaller than their supermassive cousins -- the smallest is about 12 miles (19 kilometers) across -- and
may be quite common in any galaxy [source: Wethington]. The closest stellar black hole to our solar
system is Cygnus X-1, which is about 6,000 light-years away.

Let's say you go to your travel agent and book a one-way flight to an exotic, five-star black hole. You
check your luggage, board the rocket and enjoy the ride, trying hard to ignore the screaming kid in the
seat behind you. What you see as you approach your final destination depends on what's around the
black hole. A companion star located nearby could have its light and gases stripped away and drawn into
the neighboring gravity well. Black holes in this situation will often be encircled by an accretion disk, a
ring of hot, luminous gas with transitory bright spots similar to solar flares. Even if a black hole resides by
itself in a dark corner of the universe, it gives off strong bursts of radiation that your ship's sensors will be
able to detect. The bottom line: You'll know exactly when you're getting close.

The captain knows, too, so he or she stops the spacecraft just beyond the black hole's gravitational pull.
You'll make the rest of the trip using the jet packs mounted on your spacesuit. You don the suit, exit the
vessel and start zipping toward your destiny. Eventually, the black hole's gravity seizes you and begins to
reel you in. As you get closer, you orient yourself so you're falling feet-first toward the event horizon.

Brace yourself. On the next page, things get really interesting on our black hole journey. Falling to
Pieces

Here's where it starts to get bad. Tidal forces -- so named because similar gravitational forces between
the moon and the Earth cause ocean tides -- increase dramatically as the distance between you and the
black hole shrinks. This means the gravity acting on your feet is much stronger than the gravity acting on
your head. As a result, your feet begin to accelerate much faster than your head. Your body stretches out,
not uncomfortably at first, but over time, the stretching will become more severe. Astronomers call
this spaghettification because the intense gravitational field pulls you into a long, thin piece of spaghetti.

When you start feeling pain depends on the size of the black hole. If you're falling into a
supermassive black hole, you'll begin to notice the tidal forces within about 600,000 kilometers (372,822
miles) of the center -- after you've already crossed the event horizon [source:Bunn]. If you're falling into a
stellar black hole, you'll start feeling uncomfortable within 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles) of the center,
long before you cross the horizon [source: Bunn].
 Either way, spaghettification leads to a painful conclusion. When the tidal forces exceed the elastic limits
of your body, you'll snap apart at the weakest point, probably just above the hips. You'll see your lower
half floating next to you, and you'll see it begin to stretch anew as tidal forces latch onto it. The same thing
happens to your torso, of course, until each half snaps a second time. In a matter of seconds, you're a
goner, reduced to a string of disconnected atoms that march into the black hole's singularity like ants
disappearing into a colony.

It's not a great way to die, but there's one consolation: In space, no one can hear you scream.

The Legacy of E = mc2

What hasn't Einstein's iconic equation touched in our world?

By Peter Tyson

Posted 10.11.05

NOVA

It's difficult to separate the enormous legacy of E = mc2 from Einstein's legacy as
a whole. After all, the equation grew directly out of Einstein's work on special
relativity, which is a subset of what most consider his greatest achievement, the
theory of general relativity. But I'm going to give it a try anyway.
Ask people to think of an equation, and, likely as not, E = mc2 will pop into their minds. But few probably realize
just how profoundly the world's most famous equation factors into their lives. EnlargePhoto credit: Jose Antonio
Santiso/iStockphoto

THE EQUATION EXPLAINED

First, though, a capsule explanation of "energy equals mass times the speed of light squared" might
be helpful. On the most basic level, the equation says that energy and mass (matter) are
interchangeable; they are different forms of the same thing. Under the right conditions, energy can
become mass, and vice versa. We humans don't see them that wayhow can a beam of light and a
walnut, say, be different forms of the same thing?but Nature does.

So why would you have to multiply the mass of that walnut by the speed of light to determine how
much energy is bound up inside it? The reason is that whenever you convert part of a walnut or any
other piece of matter to pure energy, the resulting energy is by definition moving at the speed of
light. Pure energy is electromagnetic radiationwhether light or X-rays or whateverand
electromagnetic radiation travels at a constant speed of roughly 670,000,000 miles per hour.

Why, then, do you have to square the speed of light? It has to do with the nature of energy. When
something is moving four times as fast as something else, it doesn't have four times the energy but
rather 16 times the energyin other words, that figure is squared. So the speed of light squared is
the conversion factor that decides just how much energy lies captured within a walnut or any other
chunk of matter. And because the speed of light squared is a huge number
448,900,000,000,000,000 in units of mphthe amount of energy bound up into even the smallest
mass is truly mind-boggling (see The Power of Tiny Things.)

Of course, intuitively understanding that energy and matter are essentially one, as well as why and
how so much energy can be wrapped up in even minute bits of matter, is another thing. And E = mc2,
which focuses on matter at rest, is a simplified version of a more elaborate equation that Einstein
devised, which also takes into account matter in motion (more on that in a moment). But I hope that
you, like I, now have a basic comprehension with which to appreciate the equation's prodigious
influence.
Energy in a nutshell: Though it hardly looks full of pep, a simple walnut has enough potential energy locked
within it to power a city.EnlargePhoto credit: Pierre Janssen/iStockphoto

E = MC2 IN MINIATURE

Perhaps the equation's most far-reaching legacy is that it provides the key to understanding the most
basic natural processes of the universe, from microscopic radioactivity to the Big Bang itself.

Radioactivity is E = mc2 in miniature. Einstein himself suspected this even as he devised the
equation. In the 1905 paper in which he introduced E = mc2 to the world, he suggested that it might
be possible to test his theory about the equation using radium, an ounce of which, as Marie Curie
had discovered not long before, continuously emits 4,000 calories of heat per hour. Einstein believed
that radium was constantly converting part of its mass to energy exactly as his equation specified.
He was eventually proved right.

Today we know radioactivity to be a property possessed by some unstable elements, such as

uranium, or isotopes, such as carbon 14, of spontaneously emitting energetic particles as their
atomic nuclei disintegrate. They are metamorphosing mass into energy in direct accordance with
Einstein's equation.
We take advantage of that realization today in many technologies. PET scans and similar
diagnostics used in hospitals, for example, make use ofE = mc2. "Whenever you use a radioactive
substance to illuminate processes in the human body, you're paying direct homage to Einstein's
insight," says Sylvester James Gates, a physicist at the University of Maryland. Many everyday
devices, from smoke detectors to exit signs, also host an ongoing, invisible fireworks of E =
mc2 transformations. Radiocarbon dating, which archeologists use to date ancient material, is yet
another application of the formula. "The decay products that we see in carbon datingthat energy is
directly obtained from the missing mass that you see in E = mc2," Gates says.

Every time a patient undergoes a positron emission tomography, or PET, scan, she is "paying direct homage to
Einstein's insight," Jim Gates says. EnlargePhoto credit: Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS

HEAVENLY APPLICATIONS

Space technologies owe much to the equation. Unceasing E = mc2disintegrations from radioactive
elements such as plutonium provide everything from power for telecommunications satellites to the
heat needed to keep the Mars rovers functioning during the frigid martian winter. Space travel in the
distant future may also rely on such radiation-derived power. Photons streaming out from the sun
and other stars hold energy that in the vacuum of space can theoretically be harnessed to propel a
spaceship. "In the far future," says David Hogg, a cosmologist at New York University, "if you
imagine that we're sailing to distant stars with spaceships that are driven by radiation pressureif
that ever happens, that will be a really big legacy of Einstein's kinematics."

"One of its legacies is very sociologicalit just captures the

imagination of everyone."
Kinematics is the study of motion without reference to mass or force, and it figures in a more
elaborate form of Einstein's equation thatunlike plain old E = mc2, which concerns mass at rest
also takes into account mass in motion. (If you must know, it's E2 = m2c4 + p2c2, where p equals
momentum.) "His bigger equation plays an enormous part in our understanding of how light works,
and how energy and light can be transferred and transformed from one place to another, and that
sort of thing," Gates says. "So if you consider the larger context, the part of the equation that's not in
the public eye, it has an even larger legacy in science."

One application that draws on this larger equation, Gates says, is the giant neutrino detector now
being built in Antarctica. Sunk deep in the ice, it will detect the eerie blue light, known as Cherenkov
radiation, that is given off by neutrinos. Neutrinos are subatomic particles so lacking in mass that
they pass straight through the Earth unscathed. Studying their light helps cosmologists better
understand these mysterious particles and their distant sources, which may include black holes.
Thus, says Gates, "as part of the equation's legacy, we'll be using the ice of Antarctica to look at
neutrinos and other objects coming from outer space. And without knowing the relationship between
the energy, momentum, and mass, that would be inconceivable to do. In fact, it was the use of this
equation that led to the realization that neutrinos must exist."
Astounding as it seems, the elements that make up our bodies and all other matter on Earth originated within
stars like our sun, which are veritable E = mc2factories. EnlargePhoto credit: Heather Ringler/iStockphoto

A NUCLEAR WORLD

Einstein's equation also perfectly describes what's happening when we produce nuclear energy. As
Arlin Crotts, a professor of astronomy at Columbia University, puts it, "our entire understanding of
nuclear processes would be sort of lost without it." Fission reactors in nuclear power plants generate
electricity by unlocking the energy tied up in fissionable materials. Fusion also furnishes energy from
mass just as the equation posits. When two hydrogen atoms fuse to form a helium atom, the mass of
the resulting helium is less than the two hydrogens, with the missing mass manifesting itself as
fusion energy. Nuclear weapons, too, operate on the principle defined by the equation. Indeed, the
mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb explosion is E = mc2 made visible.

The equation spawned a whole new branch of sciencehigh-energy particle physics. Labs that work
in this field thrive on E = mc2conversions. In fact, proper design of particle accelerators, as well as
analysis of the high-speed collisions within them, would be impossible without a thorough
comprehension of the equation. Within accelerators, colliding particles are constantly vanishing,
leaving only energy, and dollops of energy are constantly transmuting into newly fashioned particles.
"Our species has repeatedly used an understanding of the equation to convert E into new forms
of m that had never previously been seen," Gates says. "One of the outposts of science for the next
century may well be whether the E includes super-E, and m includes super-mnew forms of energy
and matter called 'super-partners.'"

A grasp of the equivalence of mass and energy also comes in handy when studying antimatter.
When a particle meets its antiparticle, they annihilate eachother, leaving only a pulse of energy; by
the same token, a high-energy photon can suddenly become a particle-antiparticle pair. Altogether,
says Hogg, "E = mc2 has been very important in diagnosing and understanding properties of
antimatter."

Einstein's formula also accounts for the heat in our planet's crust, which is kept warm by a steady
barrage of E = mc2 conversions occurring within unstable radioactive elements such as uranium and
thorium. "When they decay, some of the mass is lost and a little energy is created, and that keeps
the crust warm," says John Rigden, a physicist at Washington University in St. Louis and author
of Einstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness (Harvard, 2005). "So the temperature of the outer
Earth, the crustal matter, is directly related to E = mc2."

"What he did has all the creativity in it ofAbsalom, Absalom or Monet's lily pads," says John Rigden.
EnlargePhoto credit: Philadelphia Museum of Art/CORBIS

A COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT

A similar process happens far beyond Earth, inside stars. The warmth we feel from the sun, for
example, is the result of the energy generated as hydrogen deep within our star continuously fuses
to form helium. And stars don't stop there. When they exhaust their hydrogen, they begin to burn
new fuels and create new elements, which are spewed out into the universe when the stars
eventually explode, as burnt-out stars are wont to do. "The carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen
that make up living organisms were baked in the innards of a star," Rigden says. "In terms of what
goes on in stars, we owe our existence to E = mc2."

Einstein's equation even tells of what transpires at black holes, which can contain the mass
of millions of stars. Here, E = mc2 is taking place on an astronomicaland highly efficientscale. "In
a nuclear process, you convert something like one part in 1,000 of your rest mass into energy,
whereas if you fall into a black hole, you can convert something like 20, 30, 40 percent," Hogg says.
"So from the point of view of the energetics of the universe, these black holes are important,
because they are big converters of rest mass into energy."

"That's one of the legaciesthat we've learned the power of human

creativity in the sciences."
On the largest scale of allthe beginning of the universeE = mc2 is the only accepted explanation
for what was going on. In the first seconds after the Big Bang, energy and matter went back and
forth indiscriminately in exact accordance with the equation. "The description of how the Big Bang
unfolds would be much, much different if you couldn't interconvert mass to energy," Crotts says. If it
weren't for E = mc2, the universe would have ended up with a completely different collection of
particles than we have now. "I'm not sure what we would have, but we definitely wouldn't be here,"
he says.

INTANGIBLE ASPECTS

The equation's legacy extends into realms well beyond the scientific. David Hogg finds it very useful
in teaching, for instance. "I use the equation a lot in class because it's the one equation that all
students have definitely heard of," he says. "So one of its legacies is very sociologicalit just
captures the imagination of everyone." It also helps students remember the units of energy. "A joule
is a kilogram meter squared per second squared, and the way you remember that is E = mc2," he
says.

Arlin Crotts notes the world Einstein's equation opened up for us. "It just laid bare the fact that all this
stuff lying around us is potentially a tremendous reservoir of energy, almost beyond the imagination,
if only we could devise ways to get at it," he says. "And that's just an amazing fact." For John
Rigden, the equation and Einstein's other leaps of imagination revealed how scientists can be just as
visionary as artists, writers, and other "creative" types. "What he did," Rigden says, "has all the
creativity in it of Absalom, Absalom or Monet's lily pads."

Jim Gates seconds that. Until Einstein's time, scientists typically would observe things, record them,
then find a piece of mathematics that explained the results, he says. "Einstein exactly reverses that
process. He starts off with a beautiful piece of mathematics that's based on some very deep insights
into the way the universe works and then, from that, makes predictions about what ought to happen
in the world. It's a stunning reversal to the usual ordering in which science is done. So that's one of
the legaciesthat we've learned the power of human creativity in the sciences. Or, as Einstein
himself might have said, 'to know the mind of God.'"

In the end, the equation's influence, on both scientific and sociological fronts, is indeed hard to
separate from Einstein's influence as a wholewhich, like E = mc2-derived heat from the sun, shows
no sign of diminishing.