The Almost Daily

It was on this day in 1905 – 121 years ago, though it doesn’t seem nearly that long, what with relativity and all – that Albert Einstein published his paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.”  This paper laid out the principle of Special Relativity, which, among other things, showed that time passes slower for moving objects, and it led to the concept of E=mc2, which was published in the paper "Does the inertia of an object depend upon its energy content?" in November of 1905.  All told, Einstein published four papers in 1905.  The other two were: "On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat" (which we all affectionately know as Brownian Motion, published in May), and "On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light" (edited down to the Photoelectric Effect).  The latter paper proposed that light has matter (photons), and is therefore subject to the pull of gravity.  All told, 1905 was a very good year for Albert, and a year that changed our fundamental understanding of physics, and... well... everything.

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