Past Opinion Articles

Article for the week of 4/26/06

Straight from the Swede

E is NOT mc2

By, Cozmic

Okay, so everyone keeps saying how brilliant Einstein was, and how the theory of relativity is e=mc2 but it is simply not true. For starters, the whole thing is way more complicated than that. General relativity states that no person who is not a physics professor can totally understand it, and also curves space/time and stuff like that. I am not a physics professor, I do not have the prerequisites for understanding it. Then again, nether does, I am told, the physics professor at our school. Not in full, anyway. But, as has been said, this can totally not be summarized with E=mc2. It is far, far to complicated for that. Instead, and I am sure of this, here is the real story behind the theory of relativity.

See, Einstein would often have too much physics stuff in his head, often even carrying his papers with him wherever he went, and since his head was too full of physics things, he would often scribble down notes on these papers so he would remember them later. Among these things was the night when he went to a bar and met a lovely Irish lass called Erica McSquared, and they really hit it off. So Albert Einstein happily jotted down e.mc2, since it was quicker and Einstein was always thinking of physics, too much to even comb his hair (which makes this even more of a weird coincidence) and decided to call her later. Which he did and it didn't work out, and the rest is history. However, Einstein did send in his papers, having written too much to do something else, and at the bottom people thought there was the general rule that would then go on to guide millions of people. All based on a fraud. Or maybe it was just blind luck. Who knows. The main point is, the theory of relativity is not e=mc2, and shame on you for thinking else wise about the story of Albert Einstein and Erica McSquared, the greatest random occurrence in the history of mankind since Newton got hit by an apple because the tree decided he was too heavy against the bark. Then again, I'm no history professor either, so I might be wrong. Just not as wrong as E being mass times the speed of light squared.