Aug 30 2007
Special Relativity
It was in Albert Einstein’s 1905 paper “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy-Content?” that he revealed E = mc2. It was a follow-up to his “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” the same year. The follow-up contains the words, in English translation, near the end: “Moreover, the difference K0 – K1, like the kinetic energy of the electron, depends on the velocity.” Then, at the very end it says: “If the theory corresponds to the facts, radiation conveys inertia between the emitting and absorbing bodies.”
Was Einstein close to figuring out gravity? The Bohr model of the atom was still a few years away, but by that time Einstein was thinking General Relativity and warped space time.