From the Editorial Board

The discovery of the law of the interrelation of mass and energy, prepared by P. N. Lebedev’s classical experiments on the determination of light pressure and generalized in the theory of rapid motions, was a great achievement of modern physics. On the basis of this law, for example, the binding energies of nuclei are evaluated and other physical calculations are carried out.

Like many other discoveries of physics, the law of the interrelation of mass and energy received an idealistic interpretation abroad. Present-day energetists, striving to conceive motion without matter, tried to present this law as a supposedly physical proof of the disappearance of matter, of its transformation into energy. Of course, these attempts are pseudoscientific speculation.

However, antiscientific interpretations of this law have also penetrated Soviet literature. In particular, confused views were expressed by Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR T. P. Kravets, who asserted that energy is matter*); by publishing his article the editorial board disoriented readers on this question, for which it expresses its regret.

In the physical literature one also encounters the assertion of the mutual transformation of mass and energy. This is a straightforward misunderstanding, since the relation \(E = mc^3\), expressing the connection between the mass and energy of one and the same object at any moment of time, cannot, even in its form, be interpreted as an equation of transformation.

) T. P. Kravets, “The Evolution of the Doctrine of Energy (1847–1947),” UFN*, vol. XXXVI, 338, 1948.

Along with this, physicists have differing understandings of the nature of mass and energy and of the character of the connection between them. The Editorial Board has deemed it advisable to publish, for discussion, several articles received by the editors that examine this question in various aspects. Some particular assertions by the authors of these articles are debatable.

An important task for Soviet physicists and philosophers is the further development of questions concerning the nature of mass and energy, as well as concrete criticism of attempts by certain foreign theorists to construct physics as a theory of motion without matter.

The articles are being printed in the order in which they were received by the editors.