Einstein's E=mc2 on display at Shanghai Expo

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Friday 07 May 2010 00:00 BST
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Two pages of the original manuscript of Albert Einstein's famed "General Theory of Relativity" were unveiled Thursday at Shanghai's World Expo, state media reported.

The priceless documents were shown off by Israel's finance minister Yuval Steinitz at his nation's pavilion, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The two pages, selected from a total of 46, contain the famous physicist's E=mc2 equation, which describes mass-energy equivalence, it added.

Written in Einstein's home in Berlin in 1916 and donated to Jerusalem's Hebrew University when it opened in 1925, the document redefined mankind's understanding of the fabric of our existence - space, time and gravity.

The work revolutionised scientists' understanding of the universe and underpinned a century of major discoveries by theorising, among other things, that the flow of time was affected by the force of gravity.

Einstein was born in 1879 and won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1921 before fleeing Nazi Germany for the US in the 1930s.

A record number of countries are participating in the Shanghai Expo, which is expected to attract at least 70 million visitors - the vast majority of them Chinese.

mbx/aad

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