Einstein's celebrated formula e=mc2: proven right

by danesller0127 | November 21, 2008 at 06:30 am

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It's more than a century now, but Albert Einstein's celebrated formula e=mc2: has finaly been corroborated. 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 calculation for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms.

According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons comprise smaller particles known as 'quark', which in turn are bound by gluons. The odd thing is this: the massof glouns is zero and the mass of quarksis only five percent. Where, there, is the missing 95 percent?

The e=mc2: formula shows that mass can be converted in into, and energy can be converted into mass. By showing how much energy would be released if a certain amount of mass were to be converted into energy, the equation has been used many times, most famously as the inspirational basis for building atomic weapons.

But resolving e=mc2: at the scale of sub-atomic particles--in equations called quantum chromodynamics--has been friendishly difficult.

The answer, according to the study published in the US journal Science on Thursday, comes from the energy from movements and interactions of quarks and gluons.

"The chief attraction of the theory lies in its logical completeness," wrote Albert Einstein after publishing his general theory of relativity in 1915. "If a single one of the conclusions drawn from it proves to be wrong, it must be given up; to modify it without destroying the whole structure seems to be impossible."

Scientists have been rising to the challenge ever since. Not that they have been motivated by a desire to destroy Einstein's remarkable intellectual achievement—which explains gravity and the large-scale behavior of the universe on the basis of relative motion. Their ingenious tests have been devised largely to satisfy themselves that the theory is indeed sound.

Thanks to a heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian phycicist.

(source: news.yahoo.com)