Word: einsteins
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...Albert Einstein, then an unknown clerk in a Swiss patent office, rescued science. In his Theory of Special Relativity (1905) he abandoned Newton's assumption of independent mass and force. In its place he put the assumption, well supported by observation, that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, no matter what the speed of its source...
Slow Clocks, Heavy Matter. Obviously, something is wrong, for even Relativity does not abolish simple arithmetic. Einstein's daring conclusion was that only the speed of light is invariable. When the speed of a body changes, its dimensions and its mass and its time also change. As it speeds up, it shrinks (in the direction of the motion); its clocks slow down; its matter grows heavier. If the earth were to reach a speed of 161,000 m p s, every pound of matter in it would double in weight...
Shrunken yardsticks are hard to measure, but the increase of mass which Einstein predicted in 1905 has been observed ac curately. Certain material particles shot out by radium move at 185,000 m p s, almost the speed of light. When they are weighed in flight (by a magnetic device), their mass is shown to have increased ac cording to his prediction...
...makes the mass increase? A fast-moving body, Einstein proved mathe matically, has more energy, and energy has mass. Thus the mass of a moving body is its "rest-mass" plus the mass of the energy it contains...
This was a revolutionary concept. If energy can turn into mass by speeding up a moving body, then mass, perhaps, can turn into energy. "Certainly," said Einstein. "Mass, including the mass of all matter, is merely another form of energy." In his famous equation, he gave their equivalent values: E = mc2.*This meant that every pound of any kind of matter contained as much energy as is given off by the explosion of 14 million tons of TNT. It took the world 40 years (until Hiroshima) to appreciate this shocker...