Naked Science Forum

On the Lighter Side => New Theories => Topic started by: Cuey on 27/07/2006 11:45:32

Title: e=mc2 wrong?
Post by: Cuey on 27/07/2006 11:45:32: Im not sure if this is the right place so sorry if it isn't!

I recently read somewhere that Einsteins famous equation e=mc2 is flawed and recently (in the last decade or so) a scientist had revised and modified it. I was wondering what your thought were on this and if anybody else has heard of this? Also does anyone know what the revised equation is? (i can't remember it or find the source!)

E=MC2 is wrong!!!
Title: Re: e=mc2 wrong?
Post by: Mjhavok on 03/08/2006 06:37:31: Eh no I don't think so.
Title: Re: e=mc2 wrong?
Post by: another_someone on 03/08/2006 12:31:08: All human endeavour is flawed, but I have not yet heard of anyone who has discovered what the flaw might be in E-MC^2.

But then, although E-MC^2 is the best known product of Einstein's work, it is little more than a sound bite – it is but the smallest corner of a theory that has many ramifications that are far more complex than that.

George
Title: Re: e=mc2 wrong?
Post by: hugo_macedo on 03/08/2006 20:57:37: Hi,

I've heard about this subject too, but is something a bit more complex than a "new equation". The idea, according to what I heard, was brought by a portuguese investigator, Dr. João Magrejo, which has said that light, in fact, can travel faster than the light speed :p! They call these particals taquions and, although their existance hasn't been proven yet, they are strong evidences of this. If it happens, than E=mc^2 is wrong, once Einstein came to it by assuming the constantibility of the light speed... Several other evidences have shown that this investigator might be correct, once the light speed wasn' always 3x10^8 m/s! An interesting subject, indoubtedely ;)

Best regards

Hugo Miguel M. Macedo
Chemical Engineering
Title: Re: e=mc2 wrong?
Post by: another_someone on 03/08/2006 21:49:45: No, tachions are not inconsistent with relativity, but wholly consistent with it. What would be inconsistent would be if tachions could ever interact with ordinary matter, and if they do not interact with ordinary matter, then for all practical purposes tachions cannot exist within our universe.

The problem is not that relativity precludes matter travelling faster than light, but rather that matter travelling faster than light must have imaginary mass (imaginary in the sense of the square root of -1, not in the sense of being of the human imagination). Since matter travelling slower than the speed of light does not have imaginary mass, so the domains in which these imaginary mass particles and real mass particles exist must be different.

Whether at some future time someone might formulate a way in which tachions can interact with real matter, without reducing their speed to less than light speed, and where ordinary matter does not exceed light speed, is something I do not know.

The existence of tachions does not contradict E=MC^2, but since M is imaginary, it should also make E imaginary. It also has other strange properties; such as in the real world, the faster you go, the more kinetic energy you have, in the the tachion world, you have less kinetic energy as you travel faster. This is consistent, since in both worlds, to travel at the speed of light requires infinite energy, so as a tachion slows down towards the speed of light, if needs ever more energy, just as ordinary matter as it speed up towards the speed of light it requires ever more energy.

George
Title: Re: e=mc2 wrong?
Post by: Mjhavok on 03/08/2006 23:06:44: from google

A tachyon (from the Greek {takhús}, meaning "swift") is a hypothetical particle that travels at superluminal velocity. The first theoretical description of tachyons is attributed to physicist Arnold Sommerfeld; however, the concept has recurred in a variety of other contexts, such as string theory.

They are only theoretical.
Title: Re: e=mc2 wrong?
Post by: scottyuk on 07/08/2006 14:46:00: Tachyons are indeed consistent with current theories of relativity. They would only become inconsistent should they be able to carry any information.

Magueijo doesn't seek to dispel Einstein's theroy - He seeks to explain the first few seconds of the universe. The best theory we have is known as "inflation", which has several presently unanswered questions. Magueijo believes that a variable speed of light, in the early universe, may help to overcome these difficulties. This would mean that in the early universe Einstein's theories couldn't have held.

There is little debate that General Relativity is a very accurate description of the present universe
Title: e=mc2 wrong?
Post by: Mr. Scientist on 02/10/2009 09:40:00: Quote from: Cuey on 27/07/2006 11:45:32
Im not sure if this is the right place so sorry if it isn't!

I recently read somewhere that Einsteins famous equation e=mc2 is flawed and recently (in the last decade or so) a scientist had revised and modified it. I was wondering what your thought were on this and if anybody else has heard of this? Also does anyone know what the revised equation is? (i can't remember it or find the source!)

E=MC2 is wrong!!!

I have a sneeky suspicion that the person who claimed Einstein equation wrong was in fact a teacher by the name of Ajay Sharma. He gave the equation a dimensionless coefficient which gave the ''feasibility'' of matter. But as far as i can tell, it wasn't groundbreaking stuff, nothing that has made a lasting impression anyhow.
Title: e=mc2 wrong?
Post by: Vern on 02/10/2009 12:58:23: Henry Poincare used the equation E = MC² to describe the momentum of light. He also had most of relativity phenomena described before Einstein wrote about it. Poincare predated both Einstein and Lorentz in the use of the equation. Funny how we change history sometimes.

Here's a Wiki on Poincare (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9)

Quote from: the link
Poincaré introduced the modern principle of relativity and was the first to present the Lorentz transformations in their modern symmetrical form. Poincaré discovered the remaining relativistic velocity transformations and recorded them in a letter to Lorentz in 1905. Thus he obtained perfect invariance of all of Maxwell's equations, an important step in the formulation of the theory of special relativity.
Title: e=mc2 wrong?
Post by: Mr. Scientist on 03/10/2009 01:44:33: Well - he used a form:

E/c^2 = M
Title: e=mc2 wrong?
Post by: Vern on 03/10/2009 12:59:33: Yes; but it is the same equation, just rearranged. As far as I know, that equation that relates mass and energy has held up for well over a hundred years. There has never been an experiment that refutes it. Some theories, such as the expansion theory, have a problem with it. When a theory predicts events that can not happen within the physical laws of nature, it is usually the theory that has a problem.

There is only one exception; when reality does not agree with Quantum Theory, reality is wrong. [:)]
Title: e=mc2 wrong?
Post by: yor_on on 16/10/2009 21:19:40: FTL as Another_someone and Scott wrote relates to SpaceTimes concept of information and will not coincide with any interaction of the same inside SpaceTime. That first inflationary period that we don't know anything about would, if Magueijo was right, then consist of information going FTL, as seen from what we have now. He tries to bypass this by assuming that the speed of light varies. But if that varies what more of our known 'constants' will change? I presume SpaceTime to be an 'elastic whole' and If you change one parameter of it I expect several other parameters to become different too.
Title: e=mc2 wrong?
Post by: Vern on 20/10/2009 01:39:23: Just in case anyone does not by now know my position on this, I suspect that the physical laws of nature that we have discovered to hold true for every experiment we have yet devised, held true for events in the past. Any theory that must have these natural laws submit to chaos, is just a little suspect to me. Maybe any such theory needs work.