PARIS (AFP) – 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 Centre 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.
In other words, energy and mass are equivalent, as Einstein proposed in his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905.
The e=mc2 formula shows that mass can be converted into energy, and energy can be converted into mass.
Well, that’s that then.
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Interesting. But it has been taught as a fact anyway, or no? I can’t recall any teacher having ever told me that it’s ‘only’ a theory.
I think it’s taught as true (perhaps differentiated from fact?) because it works (elegantly, which is very important). Having concrete corroboration is definitely a plus.
Indeed.