Almost on the very day Albert Einstein’s famous equation turned 106, a great uproar went up over an experiment at a laboratory in Europe that might have — just might have — overturned it. That every news organizations in world carried the story, and the most senior scientists felt the need to weigh in with their own opinion is testament the the importance of E=MC². That most basic of equations was developed by Einstein during his free time away from his work at the Patent motion, and then published along with three other important papers of his.

On this day, September 27, in 1905, the German science journal published Einstein’s paper that for the first time laid out in mathematical terms the relation of mass to energy.

The E in the formula stands for Energy, and equals to the mass of an object multiplied by “C” – the speed of light in a vacuum, or 300,000,000 meters per second. The upshot is that even the tiniest masses, when completely converted would produce enormous amounts of energy. So if you’re ever holding out for a Star Trek-type transporter that could convert matter into energy to be “beamed” from place to place, don’t count on it: the mass of a human human being would create an equivalent amount of energy that’s larger than what the entire world put together right now is capable of producing.