411 REFERENCE · Wikibooks
Electricity and magnetism/Electrostatics/The potential energy of the mass: E = mc²
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Even mass is potential energy.
The mass of any body is proportional to the energy that could be released if it were annihilated:
or
where is the speed of light.
A mass always has the potential to be annihilated.
The equation , discovered by Einstein in 1905, can be proven from the fundamental equations of electromagnetism, Maxwell's equations, discovered in 1865. It is explained and proven in the last chapter of this book.