Do we really understand the world we live in? (Postscript)

Shortly after I posted the final part of the "Do we really understand the world we live in?" series (can I call it a series?) anyway, an article was published on Yahoo stating that Einstein's most famous equation E=mc^2 had been corroborated for the first time. Here is a link to the article e=mc2: 103 years later, Einstein's proven right.

It's difficult to explain how, but this equation was derived from his Theory of Special Relativity. I just watched a special on the History Channel about Einstein. It explained how another one of his theories, the Theory of General Relativity was validated. If you think Special Relativity is wild, the theory of General Relativity will absolutely blow your mind. Anyway, the amazing thing is, we are just now able to verify one of his ideas, and they've been working on it for over 100 years, and are using supercomputers to do it. He changed our view of our world, its taken 100 years for us to catch up to him.

So, you are probably thinking, ok, so Special Relativity is cool to think about, but what does it have to do with my everyday life? This validation that was recently annouced, kind of bring it all into perspective. Here is the important phrase in the article:

A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France's Centre for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world's mightiest supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms.

According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons comprise smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are bound by gluons.

The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 percent?

To simplify the jargon a bit, think of an atom as an egg, the egg has a certain mass (or weight kind of). When you crack the egg open and look at the component parts, you find that when you add up the parts of an egg, you can only account for 5% of the mass of the whole egg. Where is the rest of the egg?

Einstein said that mass is increased by energy (expressed as the orbit of the components of the atom) and these guys proved that this accounts for 95% of what we see and touch. Amazing stuff.

I'm reminded of a quote that I heard somewhere (not sure where)

"Talent hits a target that no one else can hit, Genius hits a target that no one else can see"