In the Episode Dr. Pamela Gay stated "Mass changes the faster an object travels..." How does the mass change? Does it stretch somehow like a string, grows bigger or smaller? How do we know this and what are examples of something's mass changing as speed increases? At which point or speed does the mass of an object begin to change? How would this affect human's traveling at greater speeds in our solar system?

as you get quicker you get heavier

the way we travel round the solar system i (slow) i dont think it would make any diff

at the speed of light your mass would as i understand it be infinite...and would need infinite energy to move.....

some one more knowledgeable may be able to give you numbers...

you also get shorter... lol

what i dont understand is c relative to what??

i am already traveling at c relative to some far away galaxies....?

maybe im fatter than i thought

In my case, gravity is making me shorter than I deserve.

__________________
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it... of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms...
Albert Einstein

Because everything is relative so is mass. Time becomes relative, and if time is relative as well as distance. And damian was on the ball. Because you need more energy content in order to travel, you mass must give way to provide that. (Such as light. Light is "massless" because all of it's mass is being converted into motion).

And there are ways to test this. In particle colliders, you can approxiamate the mass by an object falling. As objects approach the speed of light, they fall at a more acute angle, meaning that their mass is more. Also, you can hit particles with light and measure their movement. A heavier particle will move a little.

But again, you'd have to be traveling at 99% the speed of light to tell the difference. I believe that an electron traveling at 99.1% and another electron moving at 99.2% will have a 120% difference in weight. (I can't remember the figures)

We are all traveling well in excess of c relative to something, this is true. There are parts of the universe that are separated by such a large amount that the expansion is pushing them apart faster than the speed of light.

The 'universal speed limit' of C only applies locally, which you can think of as being similar to your car measuring speed relative to the road or a plane measuring speed relative to the air it passes through. You measure your speed with a light clock and hence relative to the space you are traveling through.

*blink*

If you are having trouble grasping relativity try reading Mr Tomkins in Wonderland by George Gamow. It is the simplest way I can think of explaining relativity and has excellent diagrams, pictures and metaphors to help along the way.

thanks you for the recommendation i will look it up



tho to stop being coy the blink was in response to

''The 'universal speed limit' of C only applies locally, which you can think of as being similar to your car measuring speed relative to the road or a plane measuring speed relative to the air it passes through. You measure your speed with a light clock and hence relative to the space you are traveling through.

which is incorrect....

i just did not want to mention it as its hard to explain why....

c does not only apply locally..(unless by local you mean our ''bubble'' of the universe..).we do not measure our speed against a fixed background of space...as there is not one..and then i might get a bit confused

but we measure our speed relative to some other object...so its all relative lol

we are not really moving faster than c away from distant galaxys its just alot of space is being formed between us...


?

I have attached a jpeg of what I believe is the equation (since I can't write fraction bars it would be really messy). I''m not 100% sure its correct so you might want to check yourself.

In the equation, m1 is the relativistic mass (mass while its moving), m2 is the mass at rest, v is the velocity of the object whose mass you are measuring, and c is the speed of light. The mass is given in kilograms and the velocities (of the object and light) are given in meters per second.

This equation also helps demonstrate, at least in a mathematical way, why it is impossible for an object with mass to move at the speed of light. If you closely examine the equation, you'll notice that at very slow speeds v^2 over c^2 will equal a very small number. At very high speeds v^2 over c^2 will equal a higher number, but it will never go over one (unless you were going faster than the speed of light, but to go faster than the speed of light you would have to go at the speed of light for at least a very small time while you were acceletrating).

At low speeds since v^2/c^2 is a small number, 1-(v^2/c^2) would equal a number only slightly smaller than one, like 0.999999999999967
The square root of that is even closer to one. 1/the square root of 0.999999999999967 would equal a number only slightly larger than one, and therefore when you multiply the object's mass by that number the mass doesn't change that much.

At high speeds since v^2/c^2 is a number only slightly smaller than one, 1-(v^2/c^2) would equal a very small number, like 0.000000000000067
The square root of that is slightly larger (but still a small number). 1/the square root of 0.000000000000067 would equal a very large number, and therefore when you multiply the object's mass by that number the mass increases a lot.

If you were moving at the speed of light, then v^2/c^2 would equal one (300,000,000,000/300,000,000,000). 1-1 is 0, and the square root of 0 is 0. You would then be dividing 1 by 0 which you can't do in math (you can't divide any number by 0).

As far as the relativistic effects on an object, yes the object would undergo a process called elongation. I don't know the equation for it but you can probably find it if you google it. It is similar to the mass increase in that at small speeds you only elongate slightly (so small you wouldn't even be close to seeing it with your eye or even an electron microscope), but the closer you move to the speed of light the more you would elongate. Every part of you that is moving would elongate including your eyes, so you wouldn't notice it yourself. Only people that are standing still or moving slower than you would notice.

There is a really good howstuffworks article regarding relativistic effects: http://science.howstuffworks.com/relativity.htm

Forgive me if any of the above infomation is incorrect, but I'm only 15 years old.

Attached Images

Equation.JPG (3.3 KB, 2 views)

welcome to the forum nick

thats quite some 1st post !







dont things shorten under lorentz transformation?

Wow Nick!

You look like you're gettin' the hang of this stuff. I think Damian is right, stuff get's shorter at relativistic speeds.
EDIT: appears shorter to an observer might be a bit more correct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_contraction

Keep at it, and stick around this forum. Check out the guys over at Q&A too - some of those guys are really smart! Damian and me - we're just a little bit smart...

http://www.bautforum.com/questions-answers/

Find something you like, jump in and introduce yourself - tell 'em how old you are, I'm sure they'll be impressed.

How do you like Pamela and Fraser's podcasts?

__________________
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it... of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms...
Albert Einstein

microscopically....

So I'm thinking you checked the math.

__________________
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it... of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms...
Albert Einstein

rigourously .... seemed pretty sound to me....

Nick,

You might like this website too:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/cship.html

I checked the math. Definitely... sound.

__________________
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it... of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms...
Albert Einstein

Actually, two objects far enough apart in the universe could be separating from each other at greater than the speed of light because the expansion of the universe is not subject to the speed of light limitation. However, objects can not move within the universe at greater than the speed of light. (imagine yourself on an expanding balloon. You're speed of running on the surface is only so fast, but the balloon can expand so rapidly that points on it's surface grow apart faster than your running speed. Now convert this analogy to our living dimensions!)

thats what i said isnt it?

steve.. yup he knows his times tables....

Sorry, I read your statement ("not really moving faster than c") literally...

well you cant move faster than C can you?

At high speeds since v^2/c^2 is a number only slightly smaller than one, 1-(v^2/c^2) would equal a very small number, like 0.000000000000067
The square root of that is slightly larger (but still a small number). 1/the square root of 0.000000000000067 would equal a very large number, and therefore when you multiply the object's mass by that number the mass increases a lot.


you get very heavy man

it all makes perfek sense..

Yes, a photon moving at the speed of light is traveling faster than the speed of light relative to it's point of origin in our expanding universe. But this must be what you are thinking. We just have to define the circumstances accurately...