6 = 3 x 2 F = m x a E =
mC ^ 2 «That was where I lost it...» lost what?
At the 1930 Solvay meeting Einstein proposed a thought experiment purporting to defeat Heisenberg uncertainty by opening the shutter of a box arbitrarily briefly to allow a photon to escape at an accurately known time then measuring the resulting decrease m in weight of the whole box to arbitrary accuracy so as to estimate the photon's energy E accurately as
mc ^ 2.
Dirac's 2nd quantization spinor Hamiltonian replaced E =
mc ^ 2 by E = + / -
mc ^ 2, and thereby predicted antimatter, which was discovered by Anderson in 1932 (the positron).
* barring typo's and consistent with mass conservation, the molecule (s) mass does not change thus can assume E to
mc ^ 2 in total energy is justifiably being ignored here by all posters on the original Willis» premise GHG - free air column.
In due course a Venusian Einstein would discover E =
mc ^ 2 only to protest its more destructive applications by other Venusians.
Einstein (1905) had revealed mass (m) as the source of energy (E) that powers the Sun and the cosmos, E =
mc ^ 2.
I grew up in the steam age and as a boy was thunderstruck by the implication of E =
mc ^ 2: a limitless abundance of energy for next to nothing and an end to needing to dig dirty coal out of the ground.
If it really was E =
mc ^ 3, nuclear reactions would be vastly more powerful, and the sun probably would have destroyed us by now.
Umm... E =
mc ^ 2 is well known and tested.