I have read any number of books on this subject. It's interesting to see how different folks "describe" these concepts.
Just like dollar and euros, energy and mass are interchangeable.
c^2 is the rate of exchange, but unlike the rate of exchange for dollars and euros, c^2 is a constant.
This book was written before the Higgs particle was "discovered."
Chapter 1: Space and Time.
Starts with Albert Einstein's colleague and tutor Hermann Minkowski, who we met yesterdayin another book.
Uses the same Minkowski quote: henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, have vanished into the merest shadows and only a kind of blend of the two exists in its own right.
Einstein's theory of relativity is at its heart a description of space and time.
Speed of light: constant, cannot be exceeded; that's why time machines taking us back in time cannot be built, cannot work. However, we are allowed to journey into the far future, but the doors to the past remain tightly locked behind us.
Aristotle got it wrong.
Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus): worked in the great library of Alexandria in Egypt in the second century.
"Planets": the word is derived from "wandering stars." Ptolemy knew / watched five wandering stars.
Mars: ancient Egyptians Mars was known as the planet "who travels backward."
This retrograde motion not explained until Nicholas Copernicus in the mid-1500s. Explained it by suggesting the sun was the center of "the solar system," not the earth.
Copernicus: theory banned by the Catholic Church, and not taken off the banned list until 1835.
Laws of planetary motion came next: Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, and Newton.
Those laws remained unchallenged until 1915.
Bertrand Russell's "teapot analogy."
How did c become the symbol for the speed of light.
Page 89: c is the cosmic speed of light.
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