For those involved in last night's discussion and still give a shit, here's a quote from A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking:
"As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass rises ever more quickly, so it takes more and more energy to speed it up further. It can in fact never reach the speed of light, because by then its mass would have become infinite, and by the equivalence of mass and energy, it would have taken an infinite amount of energy to get it there. For this reason, any normal object is forever confined by relativity to move at speeds slower than the speed of light."
7 comments:
I'm not buying it. Stephen Hawking may be smart, but I took one physics class in college and it was taught by an astronaut, thereby making me an expert on space travel.
After further research, I have discovered the discrepancy in our arguments. You see, there is sometimes confusion surrounding the subject of mass in relativity. This is because there are two separate uses of the term. Sometimes people say "mass" when they mean "relativistic mass", Mr but at other times they say "mass" when they mean "invariant mass", Mo. These two meanings are not the same. The invariant mass of a particle is independent of its velocity v, whereas relativistic mass increases with velocity and tends to infinity as the velocity approaches the speed of light c. So we were talking about two different types of mass. The type I was referring to, by the way, is now considered the best form of mass.
My mass increased by about 10 beers last night, I know that. Making the energy required for me to get off my ass today approach the infinite.
hawking is right. but, I think it's better to think about it differently though. relativity comes from the fact that all laws of physics are the same in every reference frame. masses change, lengths change, times change, but laws and constants don't. the fact that the speed of light is a constant and nothing goes faster than it is not really easy to prove without drwing pictures and writing long explainations.
this is why i need a blog...
my brother got engaged. yeah!!!
Okay Emily (and whoever else reads this)I got in trouble from your mom because I read in the blog about the engagement and told my parents, and then apparently stole her thunder when she tried to tell my parents. She called me on my cell phone to give me a hard time.
duh amanda
my mom likes to be the one to break the news. at least to her best friends. not to the people who read the blog though.
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