that this means that energy is matter and matter is energy which means
that they are basically the same thing. But does this really make any
sense? If you take a ball of energy, can you really make it into hard
matter?
At first glance, this doesn't make any sense because energy could be
thought of as the motion of a particle and how can more movement lead
to more particle?
I have an alternate explanation for why the formula E=mc^2 is true.
This isn't a statement of mass/energy equivalence any more than the
classical formuala for kinetic energy KE = 1/2 mv^2. We would never
confuse this formula as equating energy with mass. It is just a simple
statement that mass M moving at speed V, posseses energy KE. Simple as
that.What does the famous formula E=mc^2 really mean? It seems very
similar to the formula for kinetic energy which is E=1/2 mv^2.
The only way I think they could possibly be connected was if it were discovered that the release of atomic energy or generation of matter by energy is somehow the result of a collision resulting in the production of
kinetic energy or matter.
One of the simplest cases of energy being converted into mass is pair
production whereby a photon of sufficient energy is able to produce
both an electron and positron out of nothing. The energy of the photon
required to do this matches E = mc^2 where m is the rest mass of the
particles produced (both an electron and positron).
There are two particles produced (electron, positron), so the energy
required by each particle is 1/2mc^2 where m is the mass of the electron
which also happens to be the kinetic energy formula. The particles produced head out at near light speed and if the normal kinetic energy formula holds, then the total kinetic energy of the two particles adds back up to mc^2, so the photon energy is converted entirely into kinetic energy and total energy is
conserved in the reaction.
The normal kinetic energy formula might not hold because realtivity says that mass increases as it approaches the speed of light and 1/2mv^2 is only valid for speeds substantially below C. My assumptions would have to presume that the normal kinetic formula does apply in this case. I believe that the changes we see in relativity are due to large masses passing through the aether. They are limited by how the aether transmit forces at only light speed. However, in the case of pair production, we are talking about only aether particles themselves which are not constrained by anything else. Therefore I believe, that the normal formula for kinetic energy will hold in this particular case.
So here we can see a direct relationship between E=mc^2 and E=1/2mv^2.
The intuitive explanation is that E=mc^2 in matter production because
whenever matter is produced, it always makes a matter and anti-matter
pair which carry away half of the incoming energy. This explains the
1/2 difference between the two formulas.
However, this doesn't explain the mystery of where the electron and
positron came from. It could be explained if the electron and positron
were just sitting there and then got hit by photon which caused the 2
particles to go zooming out at nearly the speed of light.
Science currently presumes that empty space is "empty" which leads us
to the conclusion that the electron/positron came out of "nothing".
While you could accept that as a postulate, it doesn't make a whole lot
of sense for something to appear out of nowhere.
The only way for it to make sense is if empty space were actually
filled with something. People have suggested that space is filled with
electrons and this would partially solve how an electron gets kicked
out of so called "empty space". But I don't think this explains the
positron or the general experimental properties of space.
My own model of space suggests that space is actually filled with
neutron-like objects. I say "neutron-like" since I'm not sure whether
these are the same things as neutrons, but the particle would be
similar in that it would be fundamentally be composed of a bound proton
and electron. This particle forms the "aether" - a concept routinely
rejected by modern science, but in this case, it helps to explain where
particles come from during pair production without resorting to a
magical "they somehow appear from out of nowhere" postulate. The goal
of science should be to explain all phenomenon without resorting to
unexplainable postulates.
For those who will say that the Michaelson-Morely experiment disproved
the aether, if you actually read the original paper, they didn't say
they didn't find an aether drift. They, in fact, detected a tiny .01
fringe shift. The paper goes on to admit the limitations of the
experiment and suggests better experiments to determine the question of
aether drift. Later experiments by Dayton Miller further confirmed that
an aether drift in the order of about 10km/s were detectable. This
results have been routinely rejected and ignored. Not even Michaelson
ever believed in the "non-aether" picture of the world. Look it up!
See:
This is a summary of the 1887 paper:
http://www.softcom.net/users/greebo/MMexp.htm
This is the actual 1887 paper (1.6 MB)
http://www.aip.org/history/gap/PDF/michelson.pdf
This is an analysis of the Dayton Miller experiments
http://www.orgonelab.org/miller.htm
Another characteristic of the aether is that it posesses a magnetic
moment due to its composition being slightly polar which causes the
aether particles to line up like tiny magnets. A very rough analogy
would be like how Na and Cl ions line up in a salt crystal, but instead
replaced by protons and electrons.
In this model, photons are pure wave phenomenon which use the aether as
the wave medium. The effect is to cause slight forward and back
movements of the aether particles. You might imagine that if you shook
one of the aether particles with a sufficiently high energy wave, that
you might get it to break down into component electron and proton.
Since the electron is so much less massive than the proton, we would
naturally expect to see electrons ejected well before protons.
Waves normally propagate at the speed of light through the aether, but
in the case of an electron ejection, the forward movement of the wave
at the electron's location is transferred entirely to the electron
causing it to acclerate away at nearly the speed of light.
When the electron is ejected from the aether matrix, what it leaves
behind is a hole in the alternating proton/electron aether matrix. This
is the positron. It is not postively charged due to it having some
inherent charge. It is positively charged because the surrounding
positive protons are not neutralized by the missing electron. This
positron is also acclerated away at nearly the speed of light.
So now we have a complete picture of pair production which doesn't rely
on any mysterious postulates or anything that we would find out of the
ordinary in classical mechanics. It does rely on the existence of an
aether, but this is nothing mysterious and has a simple physical
representation as an array of neutrons.
The meaning of E=mc^2 now becomes clear. This equations does not imply
that energy is converted into matter, rather this is the energy
required to eject matter out of the aether which is normally invisible.