h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

could somebody please put me out of my misery and explain in simple english with words of not more than two syllables what e=mc2 means?

Sure. It refers to how much energy you get out if you smash a radioactive-thingy. The energy(e) equals the mass(m) of the uran-thingy you smashed multiplicated by the speed of light(c) squared. Look at Hiroshima for example, that was caused by smashing 1 gram of uran.

All mass (stuff) can be converted to energy (three syllables, sorry). You can think of energy as the glowing stuff that comes out of Star Wars Storm Trooper Blasters. You get a huge amount of energy from even a tiny amount of mass. So if you convert a tiny amount of mass into energy, as in an atom bomb, a nuclear power station or the sun, you get a huge amount of energy out.

The e and m are energy and mass. The c squared is just a number you have to multiply mass by to work out how much energy there is in it. It happens to be the speed of light squared, a very big number.

It works the other way around as well. If you pump energy into something and make it go faster and faster, it gains mass (gets heavy). As it gets faster and faster, it gets heavier and heavier and this makes it harder and harder to speed it up. In the end, it gets so heavy that you can't make it go any faster. This happens at the speed of light. Hence the statement, you can't go faster than the speed of light. This is known by a name which has many more than 2 syllables: Special Relativity.

I have to correct this: You can NOT reach the speed of light. You can get very, very close, but to reach the speed of light, your mass has to be mass-less (can I say this so?), it has to weigh 0 .0000... gram. And there is one thing in Universe that weighs that little: a photon.

Almost there

A photon does have mass, but only because it's moving, and therefore has energy, and mass to the tune of m=e/c^2. In order to get up to the speed of light, you have to have zero mass *at rest*... which, I'm told, is what a photon has. If you could stop a photon, which you can't. Still, if you could, and you then measured its mass, you'd get zilch.

26199

If you reach the speed of light, doesn't everything go all bendy and the part of the *spaceship* nearer the speed of light is travelling faster than the back end which is further away?

Apols - I've been watching too much Red Dwarf

Why would the front of a spaceship travel faster than the back part? Anyways, the dude asked a simple question. Don´t get him confused by all this side-talk

queegle... Nah, that's the bit where they go through the time warp thingy into a different stratosphere-or-something.

Try the time travel thread, which (strangely enough) seems to be running concurrently with this one...

Thanks for that correction, Onyx!

E=mc2, It just means "everybody else likes motorcycles, too!"

All the rest of this paricle physics BS is just gobbeldygook from people who don't want to admit that the acceleration of a well,trimmed Harley is what makes the universe run.

Triumph.

Whoops wrong place. I just can't get the hang of this.

No that's right . Triumph. Not Harley.

I read recently (on reuters or somewhere respectable) that three American scientists accelerated a molecule to 307 time the speed of light.
I don't remember much more except that it had something to do with parafin.

Was that the Molecule 996?

Sorry, guys, it's gotta be either Vincent or Harley, Triumph and Norton don't make the world go 'round. (haven't got the throaty rumble necessary for the job)

Perhaps You find me a little simple minded and there is a simple way to it that I just can't see at the moment, but ...

how the hell can You meassure the speed of a thing that is faster than light?
For example if I start a car that goes twice the Speed of light (this is just an example to explain what I mean, without any demand to be physically correct)and I put on a lamp at the same time to show the one at the end of the way the car goes that it started, the car would arrive there before the lightsignal to show that the car starts. But how can You meassure this difference taking into account that the way has to be raser short compared with the speed the car and the light signal have?

Oh, sorry I just realized that I should have started a Harley or a Triumph instead of a car. (what about ducati?)

Just think about what happened if you turned the headlights on....

Chili...

Man, my brain is travelling way to slow these times...

Chili, stupid enough to ask the same question twice...