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E=mc^2 Verified In Quantum Chromodynamic Calculation
chirishnique and other readers sent in a story in AFP about a heroic supercomputer computation that has verified Einstein's most famous equation at the level of subatomic particles for the first time. "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. ... [T]he mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five per cent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 per cent? 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. ... [E]nergy and mass are equivalent, as Einstein proposed in his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905." Update: 11/21 15:50 GMT by
KD : New Scientist has a slightly more technical look at the accomplishment.
All that computing power to verify what Einstein figured out with his head and a chalkboard.
Trolling is a art,
Because you're a douche bag?
the correct statement is: E^2=m^2c^4 + p^2c^2
Science can't tell you whether some theoretical construct is "really" there. That's a matter of philosophical definition. All science can tell you is whether the predictions of theories agree with what is observed in the world.
and how do you see relativistic speeds as scale restricted? Indeed that is what is being tested here...
Because you can - or because you should?
> Take 'global warmming' both sides have a lot of theory but very little in the way of good tests that can prove it one way or the other.
No, they don't. One side has a vast array of scientists who all draw the same conclusions from peer-reviewed research with near universal accord. They also have a good deal of data to back up their theories.
The other side has a bunch of deliberately designed, mutually contradictory, un-peer-reviewed theories for the sole purpose of making non-climate-scientists believe that the science is bad on both sides.
It's deliberately designed to appeal to people who don't know the difference between climate and weather. It should be pretty clear that I can predict that it'll be colder in January than August (in the northern hemisphere) without being able to tell you it will rain tomorrow.
There is science on one side, and a deliberately anti-scientific campaign on the other. Science has uncertainty, quantified and part of the theory. The other side exploits that people don't understand how scientists deal with uncertainty to achieve a political, not scientific, goal.
In other words, all scientific theories will eventually be proven wrong when better data is available.
As a man of science, coming to grips with this fact is central to not getting cought up in the "religion" of science (this theory says that, it is science, thus it is the 'truth'). As 'Weird' Al wrote, "Everything you know is wrong."
Shameless linking, I know. But someone had to say it.
Newtonian Mechanics as it's taught in schools is wrong at any scale. Newtonian Mechanics as Newton stated it is still valid when relativity is taken into account. Newton didn't state "F = MA", he said that "force is proportional to the rate of change of momentum". A 1kg mass accelerated by 10 neutons for 1 second from stationary will not be traveling at 10 m/s, but it will no longer be a 1kg mass either. The momentum will still be 10 newton seconds, though, just as Newton said it would be.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
That is a scientifically meaningless statement. Newtonian Mechanics is correct at non-relativistic speeds, because it is correct within the possible precision of measurement. If "right" means EXACTLY right, then ALL scientific theories are wrong, including SR, as no experiment can ever verify them to infinite precision. Moreover, as relativity contains singularities, the reasonable assumption should be that relativity becomes wrong at the extremes near it which it produces singularities. The belief that any theory is perfect can be nothing but delusional, in my opinion.
The vacuum isn't nothing. The vacuum is everything.
oh my... I am slightly embarrassed at how hard I laughed at this.