Of my conversations with friends, at times I would bring up the subjects of science and astrophysics. Not that I am particularly an expert on those subjects (in fact I am such an amateur), but I guess I am just too much of a boring person to think of any interesting subject to talk about. On the other hand, I also want to share things that are truly beautiful, of which is worth knowing.
The equation E = mc2 is this kind of thing. It is the most famous equation in human history (and I contribute the main reasons of that being the equation is very short, and it is discovered by the crazy dude name Albert Einstein), and it is beautiful. It is also easily understood by layman without much math or physics background. So please let me try to explain here to my friends who haven’t had a chance to know it yet, so as to enjoy beautiful things.
E = mc2 literally read as “E equal m c square”, where E represents Energy; m represents mass (or matter); and c represents the speed of light (which is very very large, about 3×108 m/s). The equation will then be: Energy equals Mass times the
In simple English, it means that matter and energy are interchangeable (matter is only a form of energy, and energy is also a form of matter). And the way they interchange is that, you only need a tiny bit of matter, if change it into pure energy, and you will get a very very large among of energy (as by the equation, you time the tiny mass with the square of Speed of Light, which is very very very large).
Let me give an example: if we can convert the matter of 5 pieces of M&M chocolate beans (which weight around 1 g) into pure energy, based on the equation E = mc2 , the resulting energy will be equal to around 21.5 kilotons of TNT-equivalent energy, which is about one Hiroshima/Nagasaki size atomic bomb. That literally means that 5 M&M chocolate beans contain enough energy to wipe out and vaporise a small city.
Of course, at the moment we do not have the technology to convert M&Ms into pure energy, but we do have the technology to convert Uranium or Plutonium into energy by an inefficient way of radioactivity, and here comes nuclear weaponry (It actually explained it, but the Manhattan Project did not need this equation to work back then).
So what is the beautiful part about it? (and if someone associate the equation only with nuclear weapons in a conventional and humanitarian way, one may even find the equation ugly, but of course we shouldn’t). The most beautiful part of the equation, of course, is the Speed of Light. Why not some other relationship instead of the square of the speed of light? It takes a super genius to figure it out our universe in fact works this way. I don’t know if that make sense to you, but I found it extremely beautiful that we can start to understand the structure of our universe in such a specific way of comprehension.
(side note: a friend of mine think that Albert Einstein is an asshole, based on the fact that how he ignored and mistreated his families. The judgement appears to be justified, only that being a super genius for our civilization, I think he earned all the right to be an ass to his family somehow…)
