I first came upon a very strange physics equation when reading "Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell" by Anthony Zee. I don't recall Zee deriving the equation but instead he quoted the equation directly from Hermann Minkowski's papers on Relativity from sometime around 1908 or 1909 collectively titled "Space And Time." (Space and Time (Saha) - Wikisource, the free online library). I couldn't follow Minkowski's derivation, but it stated that:
300,000 kilometers = i seconds
Where i is the square root of negative one.
To me this is a phenomenal equation. But I never saw it mentioned anywhere else. Was Minkowski wrong, and that's why it's never referenced? Or is it being interpreted incorrectly? What's the deal here?
