That seems like an unreasonable expectation, considering he's still in full-time education - so he wouldn't be likely to accept a job offer in any case.
It sounds like he only found XSS, which isn't exactly worthy of a job offer anyway.
I think the answer we want now is a non-mathematical one. It gets tiresome how most of the "answers" are just too afraid( or maybe naive?) to just say "we don't know" why the speed of light is the constant of proportionality in the mass-energy conversion equation.
You can answer the "how" very well which is what the mathematical derivation is, and which is what most people are answering in this thread but you see that none of those answers start with "Because..." but rather just keep on spitting out more math. And what we want is an explanation for why c^2 is there and what it means.
We don't know what it means, we haven't answered that question and we don't know how to answer it. It's similar to how pi keeps coming up in a lot of equations and we struggle to understand why.
> I think the answer we want now is a non-mathematical one.
I'm just an interested lay person, but my understanding is the past century of physics is a giant argument for trusting the math, and accepting it as explanation.
If someone asks "Why does xyz act this way?" then the best answer for it, once you get to non-intuitive quantum scales is: "because the math says so." Dirac's prediction of the existence of antimatter, the Higgs, and pretty much all quantum mechanical behavior are great examples of this.
Nima Arkani-Hamed, a kickass theoretical physicist, has a great lecture series on the philosophy of physics:
In an aside, he mentions that he used to explain the Higgs field with analogies such like calling it a kind of "molasses" slowing down particles and giving them mass. He's stopped doing that, because the physical analogy is really misleading. The true reason the Higgs as we conceive of it exists is that it addresses mathematical issues in our treatment of bosons that have mass.
The math said there was an issue. 50 years ago the math said the Higgs fixed it. It took 50 years and construction of the LHC, but now we've verified the existence of the Higgs.
No one has answered your question. There is no answer really to your question. At least, not to the level that you are asking. Why is c^2 in that equation? What does it mean? We don't know. It's a deeper level of understanding that we haven't achieved.
Another similar question would be why does pi come up in everything? There's a lot of physics where pi comes up and we don't know why.
The original question has perfectly satisfying explanations accessible to anyone who knows algebra and is willing to spend a few weeks studying special relativity. cynicalkane above provides a great intuitive summary.
Likewise, generally speaking, when pi comes up in physics equations it is a geometric factor, either having something to do with the bona fide geometry of the system (e.g. the capacitance of a sphere) or with normalizing some relevant probability distributions. Name one example where we struggle to understand where pi comes from in physics formula!
I strongly disagree. We don't know the answer to everything, but we have solved this question - in terms of other, more fundamental things that we haven't fully explained yet. It would be disingenuous to pretend that because we have solved the deeper layer, we can't give an answer at the shallower one.
If YC research is a success, would you consider establishing a website onto which researchers can publish the data and the analysis they did to reach their conclusions?
Often I see people say what they used to take the data and then the end result of the analysis, but never do I see any details whatsoever about the specific techniques or steps they took to transform the raw data into what ends up being published.
It's a very frustrating thing for me and I don't see a mainstream or more easily accessible way for me to post my raw data + analysis other than making a blog for myself, which I have no easy way of promoting in a paper.
I think it would be great to be the ones that set the tone for transparency and it would be a fantastic way of teaching others how to analyze data, or how to catch errors in someone's analysis.
Right now there's a huge wall of obscurity in that we have to take the author's word for it. I know many things cannot be reproduced in experimental science, but the analysis of the data should be. I can't see a reason why people would not want to share their data in academia since most people are funded by DOE, NSF, NIH and DOD and hence by the taxpayer. I think it would be great for pedagogical purposes, it would encourage best practices and it would help us be honest.
