question about mass and c

Originally posted by KingAtlas
Wow guys thank you for all this information, it is gonna take me a bit for me to read everything and i will learn this stuff. I just like learning.

Now I have done a little research on my own also, I found that one thing leads to another which leads to another haha its very interesting.

As light is massless, it can travel at the speed of light and beyond, because of the ideas of relativity, which states that anything with mass cannot acheive c, but with zero mass it can travel at c or even beyond.

Photons are not accelerated to c, but are created at c (as far as i understand) Photons only exist at c or beyond, but...that leads me to why does it only exist at c, what i mean is where you to reduce the a would photons gain m?
I am gonna do some more research.

Where did you read that photons can go beyond c? I do not think they can. There is a theoretical particle that can travel faster than light. This particle is called a Tachyon and is said to have imaginary mass - whatever that means. Their existance is only theoretical, they have not been observed in a lab. This particle also goes backwards in time, so you could use it to send yourself a message to the past, (lottery numbers maybe?).

Originally posted by damwel
It's been a long time but basicly it comes down to m=e/(c^2-1) so as c reaches 1 the denominator goes to 0 and you have m=e/0

The equation is a little different than I am showing but the result is the same for the same reason.

m=e/0 doesn't assign m an infinite value, coz dividing by zero is illogical, and the nature never came up with a physical reality where a component of its math description would include a=b/0.

Relativity is very counter-intuitive and practically all attempts to explain it without the help of math failed. That's why Einstein was exceptional, coz there was a non-mathematical idea that came first to his head -- an idea seemingly ridiculous to other scientists.

You should have used the limit c -> 0 if you wanted to demonstrate that there is no such thing as infinite mass.

[edit on 9/16/2009 by stander]

reply to post by KingAtlas

The Wiki answer was written by an a-hole who can't understand the simple reality that anyone who words the question the way it was written can hardly follow the math jibberish that followed and which is wrong, coz you would hear about this from far more competent sources.

good info guys thanks
this is a really good forum (science an tech)