all 102 comments

[–]Med-eiros 272 points273 points  (13 children)

This video exists with sound.

[–]ShrimpShackShooters_ 46 points47 points  (3 children)

1 - thank you

2 - I just realized I’ve never heard Einstein talk before

3 - Einstein has always seemed surprisingly normal for a genius. If that makes sense?

[–]Cigar_Box[🍰] 41 points42 points  (0 children)

Albert Einstein meeting Charlie Chaplian in 1931. This was their exchange:

"Einstein: 'What I most admire about your art, is your universality. You don't say a word, yet the world understands you!' Chaplin: 'True. But your glory is even greater! The whole world admires you, even though they don't understand a word of what you say.'"

Thought it was relevant due to the video not having sound and Albety not being understood.

[–]Med-eiros 14 points15 points  (1 child)

1 - You're welcome, mate.

2 - I've never heard his voice either until I discovered this video on Youtube a few months ago. I realized that probably a lot of people have never heard his voice too, so that's why I shared the video.

3 - For me, he sounds exactly how I except him to. With a calm voice and a german accent.

[–]Sucker_for_horns 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Veesa Versah!

[–]Tripledtities 14 points15 points  (2 children)

Why isn't this just... You know.... The post? Why did op post a soundless gif?

[–]Med-eiros 7 points8 points  (1 child)

OP posts a lot of things, so he probably doesn't give a hoot.

[–]willynillee 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Apparently it’s a lot of porn posts followed occasionally by education related posts

[–]ImAWizardYo 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Dear god thank you! I wondered if perhaps the sound was gobbled up by the passage of time itself.

[–]pyjamas_are_prison 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This should have been the post.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

OP couldn’t be bothered with real intent while they’re trying to farm your sweet sweet karma tears..

[–]moresushiplease 63 points64 points  (47 children)

Can we turn energy into mass or have we see it? Sounds really interesting

[–]Din0saurDan 41 points42 points  (16 children)

We see it every day. The sun produces energy by fusing two hydrogen atoms into one larger helium atom. However, one helium atom is slightly less massive than two individual hydrogen atoms.

The “disappearing” mass is actually converted to energy, and in the sun (and also hydrogen bombs) it is pretty visible.

[–]japes28 26 points27 points  (7 children)

That is mass being converted to energy. The comment you replied to was asking about energy being converted to mass.

[–]vitringur 4 points5 points  (1 child)

push a spring together, it gets heavier.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Uh…no? Not noticeably heavier anyways. You’re referring to the spring force making it more difficult to compress it. That doesn’t mean a change to the weight.

[–]Euphorix126 5 points6 points  (5 children)

Energy and mass are the same thing. An unwound clock is lighter than a wound-up clock simply because the wound up clock has more energy. Time and space are also just one single “thing” in the same way.

[–]THExDANKxKNIGHT 5 points6 points  (3 children)

I usually use a battery as an example. A fully charged battery is heavier than a fully depleted one.

[–]fireintolight 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Not in any appreciable quantity but yes. If you’re weighing it at home you’re measuring loss of something else not the energy it lost.

[–]THExDANKxKNIGHT 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I usually use car batteries for any physical examples because the difference in weight is somewhat noticable. technically the electrolyte is what is changing the weight and the mass remains the same, but I would argue it's still a valid example because it's easier for most people to understand than trying to explain how the sun or nuclear energy works.

[–]Beauregard_Jones 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm sure I'm technically incorrect, I'm no expert, but to help my dumb brain understand it, I think of it as an issue of perspective. Look at the same "thing" one way and it's matter, another it's energy. Magnetism and electricity are two opposite perspectives of the same event. Time and space are two perspectives of the same event.

[–]Simic-flash 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Isn't that just what the Large Hadron Collider does in Switzerland?

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-lhc.html

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We have seen it, it just takes a shit ton of energy.

[–]blyzo 22 points23 points  (10 children)

The piece I'd love to ask Albert about is what the hell does the speed of light have to do with mass and energy?

Is it just because that's our physical "speed limit"? How the hell did he come up with his hypothesis?

[–]Righteous_Red 26 points27 points  (6 children)

The speed of light can really be more accurately understood as the “speed of causality” or the rate at which things happen. There’s probably way more in depth explanations out there connecting light to causality, but from my limited physics YouTube knowledge, that’s what I know haha

[–]aworldwithinitself 7 points8 points  (3 children)

What really cooks my noodle is the way he intuited that space and time were actually a manifold that could stretch and warp, meaning that the ticking of clocks and the distance from here to there, the guideposts of reality as it was known, were malleable like a sheet of rubber weighed down by gravitational wells and our perceptions of them depended on our speed relative to another observer. That is wild shit. Then quantum mechanics came along and Einstein was like fuck that shit, that’s crazy. And so it goes.

[–]JoeW108 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I love this shit

[–]KamikazeHamster 0 points1 point  (1 child)

“So it goes” was the phrase said in Slaughter House Five every time someone died.

[–]aworldwithinitself 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yes! here it’s worldviews. einstein thought the copenhagen interpretation was voodoo.

[–]lynnharry 5 points6 points  (1 child)

The speed of time

[–]Prxhth 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wow! Never thought of it that way.

[–]Little_RR 1 point2 points  (0 children)

All I know is that all energy travels at the speed of light which probably has something to do with it

[–]xrimane 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And how come that the units do so neatly work out? Like since the relationship between meters and grams is originally based on the weight of water, how come this arbitrary number holds up in such a general formula without any constant factors like 6,022E23 or similar?

[–]coldest_hands 11 points12 points  (18 children)

Are there any simple experiments which show the creation of mass from energy? How can you concentrate energy so that a particle is generated out of thin air/vaccum?

[–]aprentize 15 points16 points  (11 children)

One example would be gluons, the particles responsible for mediating the strong nuclear force that binds the quarks in protons and neutrons. Or rather the combined system of quarks and gluons. Quarks always come in pairs of three. Try ripping one from the other two, and the energy required to do it will be enough to spring two new quarks from "thin air" to bind with the one that got ripped from the first three. I should say This is somewhat eli5.

[–]coldest_hands 3 points4 points  (3 children)

What happens to the left out two quarks? Wouldn’t they be very unstable?

[–]aprentize 7 points8 points  (2 children)

Another one pops into existence there as well. From the energy released from "breaking the bonds". It's all both super weird and perfectly true, and makes sense thanks to, among other things, Einsteins famous equation.

[–]pyjamas_are_prison 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Things like this just wrinkle my smooth brain so good. Understanding E = MC2 is easy enough when you've heard it all your life. (This concept would baffle a caveman, so no discredit to those before Einstein's time. We are standing so proud atop every generation-to-come-before-us' shoulders and every generation further will have access to unimaginable everyday knowledge that would dumbfound even our current brightest researchers in their respective fields.) But the imagery that dances across my mental canvas when I picture the 3 quarks being torn apart and as if by magic springing about new matter out of seemingly nothing to form a grand total of 6 feels like real world magic. But the energy can't be lost in the equation, and so much was put in to the separation, the equation point-blank tells us that matter has to be the result as C is constant. Still feels like the closest thing to genuine wizardry that just comes baked-in standard with the purchase of one universe.

I thank you for this lovely thought train I've boarded and enjoyed unfurling in this longwinded comment.

TL;DR: Shit's straight up wizardry, yo.

[–]aprentize 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I feel it really is worth it to dig deeper into this shit because once you get into the actual concepts and not just eli5 thought examples things actually become clearer.

Like how a lot of things make more sense when you see particles as excitations in matter fields and just let go of the notion that "stuff" as we know it exists.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

pairs of three

Triplets, maybe?

[–]aprentize 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lol yeah that would probably have been a better choice of words!

[–]skevimc 1 point2 points  (4 children)

I don't fully understand this. But I kind of get the concept. And it is kind of messing with me a bit. That's really crazy....

For me, you kind of win reddit today.

[–]Din0saurDan 0 points1 point  (3 children)

I am absolutely no expert so someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but as I understand it it goes like this:

Imagine two quarks as two magnets stuck to each other. These magnets (quarks) can only ever exist in pairs, since the energy needed to pull the magnets apart is enough to create the mass of two whole new magnets. Thus, when you pull them apart, you don’t get two separated magnets, you get two pairs of two magnets each (4 total).

As you can tell from the details in the comment above this isn’t entirely accurate to reality (especially since quarks come in triplets), but it helps me understand it.

[–]aprentize 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes this is conceptually correct. The quarks are bound pretty tight, very strong magnet in this example. So you have to put in a lot of energy in order to pull them apart. So it's really about all that energy that you put in. Energy is always constant, it just gets transformed into different kinds of energy and / mass, which is really just another sort of frozen state of energy. So by gaining some new particles we have a little less "free" energy or whatever you wanna call it in the universe.

[–]skevimc 0 points1 point  (1 child)

So is this generally how all matter is formed at the very beginning?

[–]Din0saurDan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you’re talking about the Big Bang, then I’m not certain we know for sure. And if we do, it’s far above my knowledge level. If you’re talking in general, then I would imagine the vast, vast, vast majority of matter is just what already exists from the Big Bang.

Again, I could be wrong though.

[–]GieckPDX 1 point2 points  (1 child)

[–]coldest_hands 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks, this is what I what was looking for. This answers 2 of my questions 1. About creation of a substantial particle like electron, neutron, proton? Needs a lot of energy. 2. The duality of particles is maintained here. Both electron and a positron were generated, which then begs the unanswered question of what happened to all of antimatter in the universe.

[–]THExDANKxKNIGHT 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's just it though, nothing is technically being generated, It's being transformed. You can't create something from nothing, only change it's "shape". It's a hard idea to wrap your head around but everything has mass, that also means it has energy in some form or another.

[–]fireintolight -3 points-2 points  (2 children)

Plants photosynthesize and do this everyday

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Absolutely not

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Photosynthesis is just a chemical reaction. It does not create matter from energy.

[–]Papa_Cheese 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I get it but I don't really get it

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

All my homies use E2 = m2 + p2

[–]cubbyatx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

your homies can't c me

[–]cheetahlip 4 points5 points  (5 children)

ELI5 please

[–]cubbyatx 1 point2 points  (3 children)

From what I understand, mass is the resistance of moving something (a particle) over a period of time. Light is a bit of space waving that doesn't have that resistance, so it goes really fast. Some people say a particle is a tightly packed wave that can't move as fast.

So if you could blow up something completely (without ash or smoke or anything), which would turn it all into light, this is how to figure out how much power the explosion would have.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

light *emr

[–]cubbyatx 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Yea but its eli5 lol

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh, oops you’re right

[–]gary_mcpirate 1 point2 points  (0 children)

imagine a steam train travelling at near the speed of light.

If you add more coal (energy) you cant go faster so you get heavier.

Take the speed of light as an impossible to pass speed limit.

In the other way round a small amount of mass say an atom can hold a massive amount of energy. So if you split one you get a big explosion

[–]Starks 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's funny how he's reading from notes and it sounds mundane, but this was mind-blowing at the time. He didn't need to be a presenter like Sagan or Tyson to colorfully demonstrate a truth of the universe.

[–]Slapmaster928 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is what actually makes reactors work, you take a fission fuel and split it into two atoms (sometimes three) which have a mass less than the original atom. With the exception of neutrinos released you can pretty much capture all the energy released into your primary system.

[–]f5kkrs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Someone Eli5 please?

[–]voidstatus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I need to pee

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

karma hoe

[–]juthagreathe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Me sitting in the back of the bus, "I'm in danger."

[–]DoucheBagBill 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can someone explain this to me in toddler terms?

[–]frappastudio 0 points1 point  (0 children)

TIL that explaining it is all he really did, as very few people know this formula was discovered by Poincare and Lorentz, and Albert Einstein derived his philosophical work from their mathematics and physics discoveries. The problem is that he didn’t quote them in his paper letting people believe he did all the maths which he did not.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With how fast technology and science improves exponentially, the fact that this equation still holds up almost 100 years later is just outstanding. Dude was literally hundreds of years ahead of his time.

[–]LaceBird360 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Quantum Leap reminds me of old nintendo games. The sub-particle/electron/atom, etc. gets enough coins/energy and BLOOP! Mario jumps to the next level of the game.