Ever wonder how Einstein proved E=mc²? This is how.
Via Minutephysics:
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Radioactive cat. Awesome.
854 notes (via scienceisbeauty)
30 Seconds to Mars:
It takes between 3:17 minutes and 5:24 minutes time for light to travel from Earth to Mars (the distance between the two planets changes depending on our respective orbital paths).
So “30 Seconds to Mars” would only be possible if travelling at about 8 times the speed of light…which is very, very impossible by relativity theory…but it’s a pretty good band name anyway!
Science-fiction stories about space travel have already inspired humans to travel to the moon. Similarly, will time-travel stories inspire us to create real time-travel mechanisms? Will we ever find a way to overcome the Einstein speed limit and make all of spacetime home?
I wonder what humanity will discover about spacetime in the next century. Around four billion years ago, living creatures were nothing more than biochemical machines capable of self-reproduction. In a mere fraction of this time, humans evolved from creatures like Australopithecus. Today humans have wandered the moon and have studied ideas ranging from general relativity to quantum cosmology. Who knows into what beings we will evolve? Who knows what intelligent machines we will create that will be our ultimate heirs? These creatures might survive virtually forever, with our ideas, hopes, and dreams carried with them.
There is a strangeness to the cosmic symphony that may encompass time travel, higher dimensions, quantum superspace, and parallel universes—worlds that resemble our own and perhaps even occupy the same space as our own in some ghostly manner. Stephen Hawking has even proposed using wormholes to connect our universe with an infinite number of parallel universes. Edward Witten is working hard on superstring theory, which has already created a sensation in the world of physics because it can explain the nature of both matter and spacetime. By realizing that the fundamental laws of physics appear simpler in higher dimensions, string theory can unite Einstein’s theory of gravity with quantum theory in ten dimensions. Our heirs, whatever or whoever they may be, will explore space and time to degrees we cannot currently fathom. They will create new melodies in the music of time. There are infinite harmonies to be explored.
