My perspective when watching content
I can no longer watch shows and movies the same way.
For example, in Invincible, some characters can fly and constantly travel from one solar system to another without an advanced map or a device telling them where to go. They also cross between these solar systems in just a few weeks, which would require traveling many times faster than the speed of light. Considering how long it would take to reach even 99% of the speed of light, and how enormous the universe is, it’s absurd to think those trips are possible.
Also, in The Flash there is a scene in which Flash runs so fast that he surpasses the speed of light. That is impossible in our universe, but what happens next is something that makes sense in it: he goes back in time.
What blew my mind the most
I already knew that mass and energy are connected, but what I didn’t know was that the equation E = mc² tells us exactly how much energy is contained in a given mass, and how enormous that number is even for a tiny amount of mass.
For an object with a mass of 1 kg, the energy is 90,000,000,000,000,000 joules (9 × 10¹⁶ J). That is approximately the amount of energy locked inside each kilogram of mass.
This number is hard to understand, so here are two ways to picture it:
- Light bulb: A 100 W bulb uses 100 joules every second. Those 9 × 10¹⁶ joules would keep it lit for about 28 million years.
- Explosives: It equals about 21 million tons of TNT, roughly 1,400 times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb.
Interesting stuff
The letter c isn’t really “the speed of light.” It is the speed limit of the universe, the fastest that anything, including information and cause and effect, can travel. It is called the speed of light only because light happens to travel at that limit. Light can do this because it has no mass. So light didn’t set the limit. It just moves at it.
Review of the book
I recommend this book to everyone. It has some math, but you can skip it, and the book warns you before it explains a concept with equations and numbers. In general, the concepts are very well explained and illustrated with good examples.
I would say this book is for a general audience, not for someone with deep physics knowledge who is writing a research paper.
Like I said earlier, understanding the concepts in this book will definitely change your perspective on everyday life, and it will make you appreciate a little more how amazing the work of the scientists behind the equation E = mc² was.