alt.sci.physics

amygdala wrote:
> nottoooily@ wrote:
>> On Aug 12, 1:09 pm, "amygdala" wrote:
>>
>>> The faster Mass travels, the more it disintegrates (for a lack of a
>>> better term) into Energy. Therefor, if Mass travels fast enough
>>> (speed of light?) it will no longer be Mass, but it will have become
>>> Energy. Is that a correct assumption?
>>
>> That isn't the way it's usually thought of. E=mc^2 represents the
>> energy contained in a piece of matter at rest. As a massive object
>> approaches the speed of light, its total energy aproaches infinity
>> (according to E = m c^2 / sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) ), while its mass remains
>> constant.
>>
>> It's possible to define mass so that it increases with speed
>> (relativistic mass), but that's not the convention in physics, and it
>> doesn't make any difference to what's actually happening.
>>
>> The reason a speed-of-light particle must have no mass is that if it
>> had any mass, it would also have infinity energy.
>
> So basically, what you are saying is, that: a moving particle will
> have mass just up until it reaches the speed of light, but on
> reaching c it all of a sudden doesn't have mass anymore, or
> theoretically can't be mass anymore? That sounds a bit odd doesn't
> it? Well, at least to me it does.
> What would be the 'state', if you will, of mass when it is gaining
> speed? My gutfeeling tells me this state should somehow change while
> gaining momentum.
> I looked at it more like this: I sort of think of atoms, molecules,
> particles, etc. as very compact strings, or fields, or boals of
> energy, which therefor feel like having mass, but actually aren't
> mass at all, just very powerfull, almost unpenetratable, fields of
> energy, that expand into less dense fields of energy while gaining
> momentum. Or something along those lines. :-)

Hmm I am contradicting myself here already, aren't I? First I said, mass
disintigrates into energy, and now I'm tryin to say mass *is* energy.
Aaargggh! :-)