Albert Einstein on Astrology - Democratic Underground

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Sat Dec-04-04 09:06 AM
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Albert Einstein on Astrology

(cont. from Sir Isaac Newton)

Einstein's immense contribution to mankind is his "special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing" (his own words). This is what priests and astrologers have been talking about forever. But before you go further, you may want to re-examine exactly what "mass" is, and how it differs from "weight" by clicking here.

Considered by many to be the greatest astrophysicist who ever lived, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) took the next step beyond Newton by postulating that there was an equivalence between all matter and energy in the universe, and that that equivalence is quantifiable by the simple equation e = mc2. In that equation "e" stands for energy, "m" stands for mass, and "c" stands for the speed of light. Thus the amount of energy in any body is equal to its mass (its weight divided by the planet's pull that gives it its weight) times the speed of light squared (the speed of light times itself). Since light goes 300 million meters per second, and the speed of light squared is 9x1016 (90 quadrillion) meters per second, there's a lot of energy in matter! This is how stars shine, how the universe makes a living, and how atomic and hydrogen bombs are able to liberate as much energy as they do.

Stars shine because they convert matter into energy. At the Sun’s core, for example, the pressure is 250 billion times sea level on Earth, the density more than 150 times that of water, and the temperature is 15.6 million degrees. The pressure is so great at the center of the Sun that the lightest gas in the universe, hydrogen, is 14 times denser than lead there! Under this tremendous pressure ionized hydrogen atoms, protons, are fused together to form ionized helium. But two protons stuck together have about 7% less mass than two separate protons. This 7% mass loss in fusing two protons together is released as energy to the tune of Einstein's e = mc2, and is where stars get the juice to shine for billions of years.

From e = mc2 we can calculate that the amount of energy in a raisin is equivalent to that released by 10,000 tons of TNT! This is how the Sun is able to emit 386 billion billion (not a typo!) megawatts every second. The entire Earth would need one million years to make that much energy at current rates. At the center of the Sun 700 million tons of hydrogen are converted by nuclear fusion to about 695 million tons of helium and 5 million tons of gamma ray energy every second. Since its birth 4.6 billion years ago, the Sun has burned up about half of the hydrogen in its core. It will continue to burn as it does now for about another five billion years, during which time it will become twice as bright. Eventually it will run out of hydrogen, undergoing changes that will totally destroy the Earth.

"Astrology is a science in itself and contains an illuminating body of knowledge. It taught me many things, and I am greatly indebted to it. Geophysical evidence reveals the power of the stars and the planets in relation to the terrestrial. In turn, astrology reinforces this power to some extent. This is why astrology is like a life-giving elixir to mankind." - ALBERT EINSTEIN

http://www.myastrologybook.com/Albert-Einstein-history-of-astrology.htm