E=mc2 - Unlocking Energy from Matter

Time, as Einstein viewed it, is like a river which can speed-up or slow-down.  That was truly revolutionary thinking.

Everyone else in the world believed that time was the one thing which remained constant.  How could a ticking of the clock ever vary, yet be accurate?  But for Einstein, the one thing that was always constant was the speed of light.  That meant everything else - including time - was relative. 

Two months after publishing his paper, on this theory of special relativity, Einstein linked energy and matter in his famous equation E=mc2.  That was also revolutionary because no one, at the time, conceptually linked energy with matter. 

Energy, on the one hand, was a nebulous concept.  What, in the world, did it have to do with matter - the “stuff” with which a physical object is composed?  Yet it was that theory which led scientists, including Einstein, to believe that tremendous sources of energy could be unlocked from within small particles, like atoms.