E=mcÂ²

ERRORIST · 2004-04-02 21:55:50

I would think if it took up the space of the whole universe the volume would have to change a little bit.

GCNRevenger · 2004-04-02 21:57:03

Whaaat? Not making alot of sense.

ERRORIST · 2004-04-02 22:07:42

I might be a little out of my league on this topic but I thought the reason the "baseball exceeding the speed of light " theory would and could never happen was because as an object nears the speed of light it's mass increases porportionally, to the point that it's mass becomes infinite and thus requires infinite energy to reach the speed of light. My understanding was the speed of light was impossible to reach but for things with virtually no mass and unlimited energy=EMR.

Dook

In order for this to happen the baseball would have to be as big as the universe, and all the mass in the universe would have to be displaced. So where does all the mass in the universe go into the baseball?

GCNRevenger · 2004-04-02 22:31:41

I don't understand where the idea that the ball would increase to infinite volume came from.

And you are correct that particles with nonzero masses cannot move at the speed of light.

chat · 2004-04-03 06:48:54

Probably better to think of the ball as a time shift and not as an increasing mass.

If you could increase the speed of the ball to C.
I would suspect it does not have the mass of the universe in it, but has the mass of the time shift, and only in our perspective do we see the increasing mass.

The ball would simply be traveling in a much smaller, in fact a universe will no dimensions and distance.
For the ball the universe would shrink to 0 as it approached light speed.

And a good reason why light seems to last forever with no effects, and why you can't go faster than light speed.
It does and it doesn't last forever

Last edited by SpaceNut (2016-06-05 18:38:32)

GCNRevenger · 2004-04-03 08:34:35

There IS an apparent increase in mass, but only to people from a stationary, objective frame of reference as far as I understand it.

Nobody really knows what happens when you hit 1C.

ERRORIST · 2004-04-03 18:10:55

Infinite Mass? Infinite energy? So what happens to the other mass in the universe? What happens to the energy in the mass in the rest of the universe?
It would just break the speed of light just like they broke the sound barrier,which they said could not be done.

GCNRevenger · 2004-04-03 18:36:06

Since it would take all the energy in the universe and then some to reach 1C, then the total energy balence of the universe would still be a constant.

Apparent mass isn't like regular mass... it would be fair to call it a mass-energy hybrid, complete with hyphen, its... hard for me to understand much less explain. It doesn't violate the conservation of matter & energy persay, but it does act like mass to those from a stationary frame of reference.

Well, they knew the sound barrier could be broken when they figured cannon balls were going beyond Mach-1, but the speed of light they are pretty sure is the top speed limit of the universe.

chat · 2004-04-06 16:41:19

I think you could get a ball to light speed if you could convert the increasing mass into energy.
Then you would have an infinite energy source to tap into to propel the ball even faster.

At light speed any object in motion stops time, or travels at the speed of time.
Any object at light speed travels from one end of the universe to the other in no time.
We simply see light taking billions of years to cross the universe because we have the time shift.

You can't travel in a finite universe faster than time, and at light speed you are traveling at the same speed as time.

No need to travel faster exists anyway since you would travel to any point from any point, in no time.

If it was possible to go faster than light speed, i believe you would simply go backwards in time.

Don't kill your great great great grandfather when you meet him though, or all the duct tape holding the universe together will unravel

Trying to think of light as a speed limit is a difficult concept.
But thinking of it simply as a measure of time makes it an easier one.

Just my 2 cents worth though

GCNRevenger · 2004-04-06 17:25:18

Ummmm no

1: You can't reach the speed of light with anything with rest mass. Ever. No matter how hard you try. It requires an infinite amount of energy, so it simply cannot be done. Nothing in this universe that has mass moves at 1C.

2: And I think you are confused about the concept of time flow changing with velocity... if you were to accelerate to >99.9%C or whatnot, time for you would still flow at the same rate. It would still take you four years to get to Alpha Centauri and thousands of years to get to the galactic core, but for people outside your frame of reference, comparitivly speaking time speeds up.

While it is true that an object at 1C will traverse the universe in zero time measured from a objective, stationary viewpoint, but for the people in the rocket going 1C, it would still take billions of years. Gene Roddenberry with Star Trek made very sure to state that the Enterpise travels much faster than 1C.

The "speed of time" is a concept that depends on where you stand... literally.

chat · 2004-04-06 20:36:40

GCNRevenger

I never use the word (never)

In the latest big bang theory, it suggests that for the big bang to have been created, matter or plasma must have for a very short period of time surpassed light speed, or gravity would have forced an immediate big crunch.
It was at rest as far as is known.

But who is to say what happens inside a black hole the size of the entire universe.

If you travel 1 mile an hour faster than your clone does for your entire life, and you both suffer the exact same natural fate.
You will die after him or her.
Time slows for you due to your accelerated speed, but does not speed up for your clone.
Your clone will experience the already skewed time perspective on earth, and so will you plus 1 mile an hour.

You are correct that perspective always changes no matter what speed you travel at, unless its light speed.

The speed of light is always the same and suggests more than just a set speed limit for light, it sugests that light is the limit of time, set by time.
It answers a lot of those (light just is, or does, special properties Etc) in all C speed theories.

If you take into account that all perspectives are wrong other than that of light, then the true universe is a very small place.

Bet the light perspective is right and our perspective is wrong.

Traveling at 99% or 99.9/100 light speed will alter only your time line as a traveler, you will traverse larger distances as your time is slowed, you will perceive a trip of 4 1/2 years to take only a few months or less.
The ones you leave behind experience the normal timline they are used to and see you take 4 1/2 years to get there.

But at 100% ???
Best guess comes to mind here, but any guess is a good one for pure thought.
For time dilation to work, time would stop at 1c for the traveler.

Where is Spock when you need his opinion anyway.
Probably fixing the warp drive with Scotty.

GCNRevenger · 2004-04-06 21:20:23

Mmmmm not quite... If you get in your starship and head to Alpha Centauri at 99%C, then it will still take you about four and a half years, inside the ship, to get there. Not hours/days/months or whatnot, time from the reference of ship does not change for you... Instead, time outside the ship and stationary will instead accelerate.

The time dialation you experience at high fractions of the speed of light doesn't get you where you want to go any faster, there's that relativity thing again...

And for people outside the ship, you still can't exceed the speed of light from their reference frame either, so there is still no beating the 1C limit.

Time is only stopped for the photon compared to a stationary reference frame, it still takes four and a half years for that photon to get to Alpha Centauri, if you were sitting on it and riding all the way.

And as far as first-second big bang, black holes, nonzero rest mass particles at 1C - none of which can be described properly by conventional physics.

Euler · 2004-04-06 22:40:13

Mmmmm not quite... If you get in your starship and head to Alpha Centauri at 99%C, then it will still take you about four and a half years, inside the ship, to get there. Not hours/days/months or whatnot, time from the reference of ship does not change for you... Instead, time outside the ship and stationary will instead accelerate.

I think you have it backwards. From the people in the ship's perspective, it will take less than 4.3 years to get to Alpha Centauri, because in their reference frame the distance between Earth and Alpha Centauri is less than 4.3 ly. From the perspective of someone on Earth or Alpha Centauri, it would still take 4.3 years.

GraemeSkinner · 2004-04-07 00:52:44

Surely if they are travelling at speeds below 1C the time reference is besides the point, for the people on the ship or viewing from Earth it will still take them the same amount of time to reach their destination. I don't see how travelling at 99% of C will make time shorter for the travellers than for the viewers.

Graeme

bolbuyk · 2004-04-07 04:24:59

I don't really understand the point of errorist, but the relevance for martian spacecraft is that mass can be converted in energy, by fission, fusion or matter - anti-matter annihilation (all not yet availeble). The interchangebility of E and M can even be demonstrated by very carefull weighing of a loaded capacitor compared with the some capacitor unloaded.

E=M? In some sense, yes.

GCNRevenger · 2004-04-07 06:07:47

Time dialation is not some magic warp drive, you are still limited by the speed of light reguardless how much time in the starship's frame is alterd. The precieved amount of time on the ship is still 4.3yrs to get to Alpha Centauri. The time dialation infact would have no effect at all on the ship and would only be experienced by the increased passage of time outside the ship in the stationary frame.

To put it another way, the time frame of the moving ship is still limited to 1C reguardless how quickly time moves in the stationary frame.

Reminder: Matter and energy are convertable into eachother but that does not imply that they are the same thing, and infact E=MC^2 and such proves it.

chat · 2004-04-07 06:11:42

GraemeSkinner,

It will take the exact same amount of time to travel 4 1/2 years, but time itself for the travel is shrunk.
Or at least perceived time.
At 99.99% c it will be a very short perceived trip, at 99% a much longer one.
But at any speed it wont take 4 1/2 years to get there.
Even at current fastest rocket speed it will be 4 1/2 years minus time dilation of your speed.

bolbuyk,

I'm not sure how you would go about turning the perceived mass increase into more speed as you approached light speed.

But an increasing mass to infinity is also an increasing energy to infinity.

I've seen a few people that i belive must be getting close to light speed

chat · 2004-04-07 06:33:53

GCNRevenger,

I believe only the person or people traveling experiences anything.
As they increase speed the time dilation for them changes, they do nothing to the rest of the universe.

The distance to Alpha Centauri remains the same, but the space between them shrinks due to the time dilation.

I think if it was possible to get to 1c, at 1c you and the spacecraft would be turned into energy.
Bet that is why mass increases as you go faster.

GCNRevenger · 2004-04-07 07:03:55

Well then Chat, I believe you are incorrect, and space wouldn't bend persay, only time.

chat · 2004-04-07 07:18:29

GCNRevenger,

We are probably both wrong.
But that shouldn't stop any debate

And good fun to see who is the most wrong at being wrong *lol*

Euler · 2004-04-07 10:01:25

[=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation]time dialation

SBird · 2004-04-07 10:53:33

GCNRevenger - you've got it backwards, I'm afraid. Time dialation affects the moving observer. Travelling at .99c, a spacecraft would take about 4.5 years to get there from an outsider's perspective. From the astronaut's perspective, the travel time would be much lower. This is known to be true because of the presence of muons(?) in cosmic ray particle showers generated when cosmic rays hit the top of the atmosphere. The particles in question have a lifetime of a few nanoseconds and shouldn't be able to get to the ground, even at c. However, because the newly generated particles are going nearly c, the time they experience is much shorter, allowing them to reach the ground before they decay.

Regarding mass:

There's confusion on this topic again. I'll refer people back to the eariler discussions we had about relativistic and rest mass. Basically, most of the confusion comes from the mixing of these terms.

Rest mass is the actual mass of a particle. Basically, it is the total mass/energy of a system minus the contribution from kinetic energy. This is what is regarded by modern physics as being the actual mass of a particle. This value does NOT change with the speed of a particle. Therefore, a proton going at 0.999999c still has the same mass as a proton at rest.

Relativistic mass basically includes the mass contribution of the kinetic energy. (however, the recent discussion about mass loss in chemical reactions makes me sonder if potential energy also add to this) This is the value that increases with speed. Ther reason it is not used by modern physics is that is is basically analagous with energy. There's no reason to call it relativistic mass, you can just call it energy. It means the same thing. However, I personally prefer this definition since it really does act more like what we think of as mass. The realativistic mass has gravitational attraction, bends space time, has momentum, etc.

Either definition works fine. You just have to be clear about which you are using and be consistent about it.

chat · 2004-04-07 11:40:49

SBird,

Great explanation on the increasing mass and muons life.

Mass and conceived mass and kinetic energy all seem to boil down to the same thing described in different ways.

I wonder what the underlying mass increase is really trying to tell us though.

1.Mass at light speed cant exist as mass, and the reason for the mass increase?.

2.We are approaching the time barrier for the universe so all the mass of the universe attempts to slow you down more as you get closer to C ?.

3.We can go at light speed and beyond, but it requires an enormous amount of energy to do it.
(not a big fan of this one)

4.We are slipping into the 4th dimension as we arrive at c.?

All pretty good reasons for the extra mass.
And i bet all are wrong
But great fun to think about anyway.

GCNRevenger · 2004-04-08 10:12:44

Ehhh I still think this is an error or assumption somewhere lurking around, accelerating to 99%C still won't get around the speed limit of the universe. The time dialation effect is still relative to the stationary frame, it still isn't a magic warp drive.

No, we can't go to light speed because that would require infinite energy. It would take more energy to accelerate a single proton to 1C then exsists in all the universe as mass or energy... it cannot be done.

Last I checked, we are always in the 4th dimension...

SBird · 2004-04-08 10:59:47

I'm getting a bit out of my depth in answering this as I'm not terribly familiar with the actual non-Euclidian geometry used in relativity. As I understand it, your option 4 is the closest to the truth. Einstein's big insight wat to look at object travelling through a 4-D manifold. As you travel closer and closer to the speed of light, you are cutting through that manifold at different 'angles'. This is a bit of an oversimplification but I think it gives the general idea. The time dialation, relativistic mass gain and length foreshortening are all consequences of that. This is why everything works out so nicely:

For example, as you approach light speed, your perception of time slows down - this is why you still see a photon moving away from you goin at c even if an external observer also sees the photon moving at c and moving away from you at (say) 5 mph. The discrepancy of the photon speed is explained by the fact that time is going slower for you. This is why it's possible to go to the Andromeda Galaxy and back in, say, 1 year in your timeframe but find out that 200,000 years have passed on Earth.

Also, the length foreshortening is another consequence of this effect - it also compensates for the apparent discrepancies in relative speed.

Likewise, the relativistic mass increase is what keeps one from hitting c - there simply isn't enough energy in the universe to allow something with a non-zero rest mass to go that fast.

The big mistake that most people make is to read pop science descriptions of relativity where there's this strange, unexplained mass/time/length phenomenon is talked about but not explained. Therefore people get all sorts of wierd ideas about why it happens. The truth is that these effects are all just result of simple geometry - cutting through spacetime at different angles causes these effects and therefore, they all end up complementing/countering each other perfectly.

The bottom line is that your concepts of mass, time and length are not correct - Einstein redefined them. Therefore, arguments like the ones ERRORIST makes all the time just don't work because they based off faulty assumptions.

The same applies to quantum physics - thrying to imagine an electron as a particle or wave is faulty. An electron is neither - it has properties of both particles and waves but is a different beast altogether - something that our common sense experience doesn't prepare us for.

What one has to do is look at the equation that the theories use. These describe what is going on, not analogies using baseballs or the like.

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