I understand it’s “energy equals mass times the speed of light squared”, but it’s always portrayed as the most significant equation.
Is this just because Einstein was a popular figure, or is it particularly important in understanding the universe? Moreso than other equations?
In: Physics
The importance is that it said that energy can be converted to mass, and mass can be converted to energy. And that a tiny little bit of mass can yield a huge amount of energy. That’s an absolutely insane thing to understand. Prior to E=MC^2 if you wanted to do an experiment where you burned a candle and checked if any mass was lost you could be pretty confident no mass had been. The gasses you capture would weigh the same as the candle well beyond the ability of your scale to distinguish. And yet it doesn’t. Some tiny, tiny, tiny, bit of mass is lost in that process. Likewish a fully charged vs. fully discharged battery has a different mass.
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