question about mass and c

wiki.answers.com...

Now what exactly does this mean, I mean, I have been trying to figure why mass is suposed to increase as it gets close to the speed of light. then i come across this, anyone give me a better explanation?

while Im on the subject, if mass increases as it approaches c, how is the photon accelerated to this speed in the first place, and how would it maintain this speed through space?? I nderstant photons are waves, but all matter is made of waves so therefor, photonic waves are just high speed matter? and if some of the frequency of waves differ in speed, then would the light be traveling in a trail?

Ok thats alot of question...
Hope someone can shed some "light" on the subject...

Originally posted by KingAtlas
wiki.answers.com...

Now what exactly does this mean, I mean, I have been trying to figure why mass is suposed to increase as it gets close to the speed of light. then i come across this, anyone give me a better explanation?

while Im on the subject, if mass increases as it approaches c, how is the photon accelerated to this speed in the first place, and how would it maintain this speed through space?? I nderstant photons are waves, but all matter is made of waves so therefor, photonic waves are just high speed matter? and if some of the frequency of waves differ in speed, then would the light be traveling in a trail?

Ok thats alot of question...
Hope someone can shed some "light" on the subject...

Okay I can't answer your questions because I'm dumb like that. Okay, well not really, but it's just electronics are my thing. Relativity on the other hand just hurts my brain.

What I can do is comment & S&F and maybe somebody that does know can help cause more people might see it then.

Also, I can discuss your question, but I sure don't "know" the answer.

But anyway, why is mass supposed to increase? I have no idea. Maybe just because that's what the math says and the equations are based on some other observations such that if those oberservations are true then it's simply what we would expect to see, but we've just never actually seen it yet.

Somewhat interesting though is they were just having this dicussion on another site the other day and someone said the misconception is actually that your mass doesn't increase. Just realtivistic mass increases, but actual mass does not.

Now I don't what that meant, and I may be wrong, but the general idea I got out of that is perhaps your mass doesn't actually increase. It just looks like it does relative to a stationary observer. In other words, only from my point of view. From your point of view, all is well and good and is the same. If that's really true or just a theory or just plain wrong I dunno.

The way I understand photos is they're a wave or they collapse into a particle, but aren't necessarily both at the same time. Or you could think of it like this. Mass may or may not be made of waves, but once you turn it into mass it isn't necessarily a wave anymore. Or if it is, this only applies to waves that are also matter and wave . In other words if matter is made of waves that doesn't necessarily mean all waves are matter too.

And then the one question I don't know is does a photo have mass when it's in wave form and does it have mass when in particle form? And if it has mass in either then back to your question? How do you get it up to the speed of light?

I have no idea.

That's a great question and I believe I have a fair grasp on the answer however it's very difficult to explain but here goes.

The first question we need to ask ourselves is what is mass?

Well we know that mass is a "resistance" to ACCELERATED motion. Not constant motion, accelerated motion only.
Current theory is that wave/particles that exibit a mass have a sort of interference with the theoretical but never observed Higgs boson which permeates the entire universe. Some wave/particles such as the photon do not exibit a mass and therefore are free to move at light speed.

Secondly, what is energy?

Well energy is movement. For example, when one heats an object, the atoms in that object vibrate to and fro faster. This is accelerated motion.

Since it takes energy to accelerate an object and energy is accelerated motion and accelerated motion is mass, the object becomes more massive until this theoretical endpoint which is as fast as a massles object (wave/particle) can move.

Does that help at all?

I'm happy to go into more detail but I'm a painfully slow typer!

[edit on 15-9-2009 by OZtracized]

reply to post by KingAtlas


Photons do not have a resting mass. They can, however, reduce the total amount of energy in a system that ejects them. So, for example, when a bar of metal gets heated and turns red, the heating process releases photons (what we see as the reddish glow of the heated metal.) The photons ejected from the metal will reduce the total amount of energy the metal had, but the photons themselves do not have a mass.

Unfortunately I don't understand the mathematics of quantum electro dynamics to give a more mathematical explanation.

The wikipedia article on the photon, especially the section on how it contributes mass to a system might be helpful.

reply to post by Toromos


You make a great point and one which I am yet to understand myself.

Since E=MC2 plainly states that energy has a mass and mass is energy, how can a massless wave/particle have energy?

reply to post by OZtracized


I wish I understood the mathematics of QED as to have a better understanding. From what I understand, the e=mc2 equation applies to resting mass, which means that an object has the property of inertia, which is the tendency for a moving object to stay in motion and for a resting object to stay at rest.

Photons do not have inertia because they do not rest. They are always in motion. Since they do not have inertia they do not have a rest mass, and therefore they do not have the mass properties that e=mc2 applies to.

Force equals mass times acceleration.
F=ma
Fema

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.

The webpage the OP linked isn't correct IMO.

Mass increases with velocity because mass is a function of velocity, roughly as shown by damwel.

I recommend the Richard Feynman Lectures on Physics.

[edit on 15/9/2009 by LightFantastic]

There's actually a paper that shows that mass is an illusion.

Mass occurs because the zero point field causes resistence as matter accelerates through the field.

This theory was published by Bernard Haisch, Rueda and Puthoff.

Here's some more info:

The discovery that my colleague first made in 1992 also has to do with a force that the zero-point field generates, which takes us back to F=ma, Newton’s famous equation of motion. Newton — and all physicists since — have assumed that all matter possesses an innate mass, the m in Newton's equation. The mass of an object is a measure of its inertia, its resistance to acceleration, the a. The equation of motion, known as Newton's second law, states that if you apply a force, F, to an object you will get an acceleration, a — but the more mass, m, the object possesses, the less acceleration you will get for a given force. In other words, the force it takes to accelerate a hockey puck to a high speed will barely budge a car. For any given force, F, if m goes up, a goes down, and vice versa.

Why is this? What gave matter this property of possessing inertial mass? Physicists sometimes talk about a concept known as "Mach's Principle" but all that does is to establish a certain relationship between gravity and inertia. It doesn’t really say how all material objects acquire mass. In fact, the work that Rueda, I and another colleague, Hal Puthoff, have since done indicate that mass is, in effect, an illusion. Matter resists acceleration not because it possesses some innate thing called mass, but because the zero-point field exerts a force whenever acceleration takes place. To put it in somewhat metaphysical terms, there exists a background sea of quantum light filling the universe, and that light generates a force that opposes acceleration when you push on any material object. That is why matter seems to be the solid, stable stuff that we and our world are made of.

twm.co.nz...

Here's the papers:

www.calphysics.org...

arxiv.org...

www.calphysics.org...

Originally posted by KingAtlas
wiki.answers.com...

Now what exactly does this mean, I mean, I have been trying to figure why mass is suposed to increase as it gets close to the speed of light. then i come across this, anyone give me a better explanation?

while Im on the subject, if mass increases as it approaches c, how is the photon accelerated to this speed in the first place, and how would it maintain this speed through space?? I nderstant photons are waves, but all matter is made of waves so therefor, photonic waves are just high speed matter? and if some of the frequency of waves differ in speed, then would the light be traveling in a trail?

Ok thats alot of question...
Hope someone can shed some "light" on the subject...

I have a very good way to explain how matter would react to the speed of light.

What you have to understand is how matter or energy is propelled to the speed of light or higher.

Matter wont ever reach the speed of light without a source like a engine of some kind.
If you want to speed up matter lets say a space ship. The rocket would crush the front part of the ship first and then the engine it self would be destroyed as it gets closer to the speed limit because of the friction force.
All matter has a limit of force before it changes dimension.

The vacuum of space is not totally empty of matter or energy. If space was a absolute vacuum the ship would never ever be able to move even with the strongest engine. The ship would be crushed at a instance.



Now why does energy move at the speed of light or higher?

Well its all about pressure or lets say a vacuum. A vacuum is all about pressure.
Pressure works equal in all directions at once. That is very important to know.

Lets say you put matter in a absolute vacuum. A absolute vacuum is. Zero pressure. Zero matter. Zero energy and Zero temperature.

This absolute vacuum would affect the matter equal from all directions. That means it will try to compress the matter from all directions at the same time to equal its own force ZERO.

When this happens the matter will start to give of energy instantaneously. Now if zero is the greatest force. Because zero is the greatest energy force you can ever get. And ill explain why.

We think that light is the maximum speed that exists. But i can explain that its far from it.
Light travels ca 300 000 km in 0.00025 seconds. That is 0.00025 second behind zero. There has to be some kind of energy that can move even faster. And its as fast as the nearest decimal number you can get to zero.

Its important to understand this to see how energy is pooled or more accurate stretched from the matter. More accurate energy is not propelled from matter but pooled or stretched from it.









[edit on 27.06.08 by spy66]

reply to post by KingAtlas


Dear King Atlas, I was asking myself the very same question not too long ago. Then I ran through Yale's open courses in particular "ASTR 160: Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics " which explains this and many other phenomena in very easy terms.

The answer to the increase of mass as a given object with it's rest mass above 0 approaches c can be found in part 2: Black holes and relativity, sessions 2 and 3.

Kind regards, M.

[Edit: I cant speell. Honestly.]

[edit on 15-9-2009 by Manawydan]

Originally posted by Manawydan
reply to post by KingAtlas

 

Dear King Atlas, I was asking myself the very same question not too long ago. Then I ran through Yale's open courses in particular "ASTR 160: Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics " which explains this and many other phenomena in very easy terms.

The answer to the increase of mass as a given object with it's rest mass above 0 approaches c can be found in part 2: Black holes and relativity, sessions 2 and 3.

Kind regards, M.

[Edit: I cant speell. Honestly.]

[edit on 15-9-2009 by Manawydan]

I have a question:

How can a black hole have a mass? When its not even a solid but a very power full vacuum space?

A vacuum dont have a large mass but quite the opposite. It hardly has any matter or energy within it at all. That's why it attracts everything even light. We will never see the light because it cant escape from the power of the vacuum force.
A black hole is probably the closest thing to a absolute vacuum of space we will ever observe.


[edit on 27.06.08 by spy66]

Here is something about frequency.
The speed of light is equal to the wave frequency times the wave length.
C = F X L

A mass with positive or negative charge will radiate.

But what if a powerful star explosion cast out neutral mass at more
than the speed of light. A neutron explosion of great force or potential
might work except for the equation that says it can't happen.

The wave equation says we have sinusoidal solutions to the differential
equation but how the solution is put together and agreed upon as a
standard of thought means other opinions are downcast.

So same with mass speeding faster than light.

reply to post by spy66
Ok, I'll give a go at an explanation, but as I've stated, I've only lately started learning about all this so I may be completely wrong at some point.

A black hole is not some powerful vacuum quantity (can you tell me where you picked that definition up?) but rather a massive object who's Radius R is less than it's Rs ( Schwarzschild radius). Which means that there is so much mass so tighly packed together that the escape velocity required to free yourself of the gravity of the said object is greater than the speed of light.

To simplify, the object is so massive and compact that not even light emitted from it's surface has enough speed to escape it's gravity.


How they form

Atoms generally do not like being squeezed together and and our Sun produces energy as a result. But if you were to take a star more massive than the sun, than not even atoms can cope with the gravitation force of the stars own mass. When such a star collapses it forms a white dwarf where the physical state is being held up by Electron degeneracy pressure as where electrons with equal charges really don't like being squeezed together. In a more massive star, not even this force can cope with the gravity and when they go supernova these stars turn into neutron stars. The whole star basically decays into what chemists would call a singe atom with no protons or electrons but only neutrons and neutrinos. One teaspoon of this stuff would weigh tons upon tons. A star that exceeds that limit by a even a little bit has no chance in hell. It's becoming a black hole.

Be warned that everything from this point on is by definition untestable and some would argue, not even science exactly because of that fact. If light can not escape the black hole, than absolutely no information can be gathered from that phenomena.

In the case of black hole, there is currently no known force that would allow matter as we know it to remain in physical state. All the matter is pulled into a single point within a finite amount of time. So the black hole does not have a surface, but it does have a finite and more importantly measurable amount of mass.

Hope that makes at least some sense.

Kind regards, M.


[edit: I really should read before clicking post ]

[edit on 15-9-2009 by Manawydan]

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.

Originally posted by Manawydan
reply to post by spy66

 

Ok, I'll give a go at an explanation, but as I've stated, I've only lately started learning about all this so I may be completely wrong at some point.

A black hole is not some powerful vacuum quantity (can you tell me where you picked that definition up?) but rather a massive object who's Radius R is less than it's Rs ( Schwarzschild radius). Which means that there is so much mass so tighly packed together that the escape velocity required to free yourself of the gravity of the said object is greater than the speed of light.

To simplify, the object is so massive and compact that not even light emitted from it's surface has enough speed to escape it's gravity.


How they form

Atoms generally do not like being squeezed together and and our Sun produces energy as a result. But if you were to take a star more massive than the sun, than not even atoms can cope with the gravitation force of the stars own mass. When such a star collapses it forms a white dwarf where the physical state is being held up by Electron degeneracy pressure as where electrons with equal charges really don't like being squeezed together. In a more massive star, not even this force can cope with the gravity and when they go supernova these stars turn into neutron stars. The whole star basically decays into what chemists would call a singe atom with no protons or electrons but only neutrons and neutrinos. One teaspoon of this stuff would weigh tons upon tons. A star that exceeds that limit by a even a little bit has no chance in hell. It's becoming a black hole.

Be warned that everything from this point on is by definition untestable and some would argue, not even science exactly because of that fact. If light can not escape the black hole, than absolutely no information can be gathered from that phenomena.

In the case of black hole, there is currently no known force that would allow matter as we know it to remain in physical state. All the matter is pulled into a single point within a finite amount of time. So the black hole does not have a surface, but it does have a finite and more importantly measurable amount of mass.

Hope that makes at least some sense.

Kind regards, M.


[edit: I really should read before clicking post

]

[edit on 15-9-2009 by Manawydan]

What you say above is impossible.

A mass will never attract energy and matter from a vacuum of space. The vacuum of space would compress the mass to = its own force.
While the mass is being compressed it will emit energy to the vacuum of space. That is the opposite of attraction.
So the black hole cant be a solid of any kind.
A solid mass in a vacuum of space cant attract when the vacuum is more power full then the mass it self. Or any mass.

The power of zero is greater than any mass of energy and matter. Because the power of zero dont have any energy or matter within it. And only then will you have a black hole that will attract everything, because the black hole has nothing.
The black hole poles everything to its self because it will try and = everything surrounding it to = its own force.

If you think of pressure this might be easier to understand.

If the mass is like you say. Small and very very heavy and stronger then the vacuum of space. The mass would expand in the vacuum, because its force would be stronger then the vacuum it self. But i dont know how a mass could ever be more powerful then a vacuum close to zero or zero.

No zero is the strongest force there is. And zero is what science call a absolute vacuum.





[edit on 27.06.08 by spy66]

Originally posted by KingAtlas
...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?

From what I understand it is not possible to slow light photons down at all. Reducing their energy results in change of their wavelength. So no. Photons do not acquire rest mass. Further details available here

Kind regards, M.

Originally posted by Manawydan
From what I understand it is not possible to slow light photons down at all.

It is indeed possible to slow down light. It will travel slower through water than in a vacuum. Some materials slow down light to a few mph. It has even been stopped bbc news

reply to post by LightFantastic
Yes, this is very true. If you search through my previous posts you'll find that I've written about that before.

A team was able to slow light down to a complete halt then move the container with that light by hand to a different room and re-release the captured light. There's a trick though. These are not only photons. Photons are absorbed when hitting matter, where outer shell electrons as a result gain energy that is re-radiated only a moment later.

Light photons always travel at the speed of light, it's the absorption and re-emissions that occur when light travels through matter that's slow. Speed of light through empty space is what's always c.

Kind regards, M.

[Edit to add a link from a post from a while back]
Slowing light down in a lab

Additionaly the same topic is clarified here: Physics forum

[edit on 16-9-2009 by Manawydan]