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2008-11-21 10:29:45
Thu Nov 20, 6:56 pm ET
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.
According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons
comprise smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are bound by gluons.
The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is
only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 percent?
The answer, according to the study published in the US journal Science on
Thursday, comes from the energy from the movements and interactions of quarks
and gluons.
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.
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 fiendishly difficult.
"Until now, this has been a hypothesis," France's National Centre for
Scientific Research (CNRS) said proudly in a press release.
"It has now been corroborated for the first time."
For those keen to know more: the computations involve "envisioning space and
time as part of a four-dimensional crystal lattice, with discrete points spaced
along columns and rows."