5 lessons everyone should learn from Einstein's most famous equation: E = mc^2
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In the real world, though, according to Einstein, mass is not conserved at all. If you were to take an iron atom, containing 26 protons, 30 neutrons, and 26 electrons, and were to place it on a scale, you'd find some disturbing facts. Countless scientific tests of Einstein's general theory of relativity have been performed, subjecting the idea to some of the most stringent constraints ever obtained by humanity. Einstein's first solution was for the weak-field limit around a single mass, like the Sun; he applied these results to our Solar System with dramatic success. We can view this orbit as Earth being in free-fall around the Sun, traveling in a straight-line path in its own frame of reference.
However, if there's some other way for the system to shed energy, things can become more tightly bound. Electrons do bind to nuclei, but only if they emit photons in the process. Comets can enter stable, periodic orbits, but only if another planet steals some of their kinetic energy. And protons and neutrons can bind together in large numbers, producing a much lighter nucleus and emitting high-energy photons in the process.
The proton-proton chain is responsible for producing the vast majority of the Sun's power. Fusing two He-3 nuclei into He-4 is perhaps the greatest hope for terrestrial nuclear fusion, and a clean, abundant, controllable energy source, but all of these reaction must occur in the Sun.If you were to put this end product of helium-4 on a scale and compare it to the four protons that were used up to create it, you'd find that it was about 0.7% lighter: helium-4 has only 99.
Take an electron and a positron and let them annihilate, and you'll always get two photons of exactly 511 keV of energy out. It's no coincidence that the rest mass of electrons and positrons are each 511 keV/. Einstein's most famous equation teaches us that any particle-antiparticle annihilation has the potential to be the ultimate energy source: a method to convert the entirety of the mass of your fuel into pure, useful energy.
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