by Thomas Jay Rush
Matter has three properties: 1) it occupies space, 2) it has density, and 3) it has mass. This post is about mass.
Prior to Albert Einstein’s 1905 paper on the equivalence of mass and energy (E = Mc2), planetary scientists had a problem. Using the law of planetary motion and the equations for gravity they could predict the exact position of every planet far into the future—except one: Mercury.
Regardless of how they pushed their slide rules, or how they sharpened their pencils, they could not account for disagreements between where their formulas told them Mercury should be and where it actually was. Some scientists proposed the existence of hidden moons throwing off the orbit, others claimed Newton’s two hundred year old formulas were incorrect, many simply ignored the problem.
The equation says energy equals mass, that they are the same thing. Not just similar, but the exact same thing. The multiplication by c2 means that a huge amount of energy is equivalent to a tiny bit of matter. That’s why a small atom bomb can destroy an entire city; a tiny bit of matter explodes into a huge amount of energy.
Put another way, mass (or for our purposes matter) is highly compressed energy.
Another implication of the equivalence is that energy exerts gravity, just like mass. When the scientists watching Mercury’s orbit took the gravity from the sun’s energy into consideration, they found Mercury exactly where it was supposed to be.
I am a reader for The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts here at Matter Press. This is the type of piece I’m looking for. A piece that compress huge amounts of energy into a tiny thing. A piece that compresses so much energy that it exerts gravity. Gravity that makes the orbit of Mercury wobble.