@validity,
validity wrote:Hello Alan,
Lets not worry about the speed/acceleration thing, it is un-necessary extra baggage.
How would you measure the mass of the spacecraft on the launch pad and how would you measure the mass of the spacecraft while it is travelling at 0.9c? You need to do this to show that the mass of the spacecraft has actually changed.
Have you found a reference to the acceptage useage of the phrase special shrinkage in astrophysics?
Linking a dictionary definition or an astrophysical use of a word is in no way against the rules of this forum.
Special shrinkage is a term used by astrophysicists and refers to the shrinkage of the object in its direction of motion at colossal speeds approaching C
I have no problem with contraction , I have always used special shrinkage, however
In the absence of gravity (a special-case scenario) intervals of time and/or length must depend on the speed of the system relative to the observer's frame of reference.
This led Einstein to his famous realization that matter and energy are in iterrelated and to the famous formula that expresses this relationship mathematically: E = mc�. (E is equal to energy, m is mass and c [constant] is the speed of light.) Experiments have shown that an atomic clock traveling at high speeds in a jet does indeed tick more slowly than the exact same clock on the ground.
Below is an excerpt from a science Geek like us
http://www.perkel.com/nerd/relativity.htm
Matter and Energy
According to Newton, if one applies a constant amount of force on an object, it should accelerate at a constant rate, forever. However, we now have the speed of light barrier that things can't go any faster.
How does that work? Does one get up to the barrier and hit a wall? Do the cosmic traffic police pull you over and give you a ticket for breaking the light barrier?
What is it that stops you from going faster than light?
If an object became more massive as it's speed increased, then it would take more energy to increase the speed of the object.
Thus, if an object doubled in mass, it's acceleration would be half. As it gets closer to the light barrier, the rate the mass increases is such that at the speed of light the mass would increase to infinity, which would take an infinite amount of energy to make the object go faster than light.
Since it takes an infinite amount of energy to be at the speed of light, and we don't have infinite energy, then we never actually get there. It is more correct to talk about this in terms of "approaching" the speed of light and what happens as you get close rather than getting there.
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The increase in mass limits and object from exceeding the speed of light. At the speed of light an object's mass would be infinite.
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The idea that mass increases is a mathematical trick to make the laws of physics work. Normally, from a Newtonian perspective, adding a specific amount of kinetic energy to a fixed amount of mass would cause speeds in excess of light speed.
But with higher mass the speed is less and the energy level still works the same. You have more mass, less speed. Because of this there became an equivalence where a certain amount of mass is equal to a certain amount of energy.
That's our familiar E=MC^2 that we all heard about by don't understand. (The letter C represents the speed of light.) This equation describes the increase in mass that limits an object from crossing the light barrier. So, when Einstein decided that time wasn't constant, he discovered the conversion ratio between matter and energy and that matter is a form of energy, and that energy is a form of matter.
As you can see, it looks like I know what I'm talking about here, but I don't fully understand it myself. If you are following me then you have an impression of the concept as well and yet still be thinking, I follow it, but I don't really get it. Well, that's where I'm at too, but because I think outside the box, I'm not going to let that stop me. I have a certain amount of "trust" in the smart people that they have figured this out and, for the purpose of this discussion, I assume these things to be true on the basis that they are commonly accepted. But I have to, at some point in the future, fill in the details.
The Relationship between Gravity and Time
Gravity is said (by those who understand this better than I do) to be caused by a distortion or a warping of space. Gravity is not a force that keeps objects in orbit, but that space itself is bent by objects with mass and that an object orbits because it is really following a straight line through bent space.
The greater the mass, the more space is bent.
But if space is bent, it has to be bent in at least a fourth dimension, which is likely to be that space is bent in time. If mass is really a thickness in quantum time, then the faster an object moves, and the more apparent mass it has because of that motion, the stronger the gravitational field.
Thus if gravity is bent space, as Einstein suggests, and space is bent in time, then as one becomes thicker in time the bending would increase proportional to the thickness. 10 times the thickness becomes 10 times the bending and 10 times the gravity.
However, if another object were moving at the same speed in parallel then it's is moving forward through time at the same rate and has the same thickness in quantum time.
Since both objects have the same quantum thickness, then they neither see any increase in either mass or gravity, but because of time dilation, the have near infinite speed. So from their point of reference, they see only an increase in kinetic energy.
The amount of warping of space in time is less because the effect of the warping of space is perceived in terms of warping relative to the thickness of one's quantum moment.
If the thickness of one's own quantum moment becomes the yardstick for which one perceives the bending of space in time, the effects of mass and gravity are inversely proportional to one's quantum thickness. If this is so, then observers moving at different speeds will measure mass and gravity differently based on their quantum time thickness.
And, if both mass and gravity are relative to quantum time, that would preserve the laws of physics at all speeds so that no one could calculate their own speed through absolute space by measuring their own change in mass and gravity. Their rate of motion through time cancels out their increase in mass and gravity due to the increase in quantum time thickness. What this means is that there is a time component to both mass and gravity.
Suppose two space ships were traveling together at a speed so fast that their aging process slowed by a factor of two. They would be moving forward in time twice as fast as a nonmoving observer. Now suppose one of the space ships turned on a 100 watt light bulb. To the other ship it would appear to radiate 100 watts.
But if the bulb is aging half as fast, then it is putting out energy at half that rate to a nonmoving observer and appears as if it were a 50 watt bulb, do to time dilation.
Remember that power is the rate that energy is dissipated over time, so if you double time, you cut power in half. Power has a time component. Similarly, at those high speeds it would appear to a nonmoving observer that both mass and gravity increase by a factor of two. But to the moving observer both mass and gravity stay constant.
Like the light bulb, it would appear that gravity has a time component in that if you change the time reference, then you change gravitational attraction.
The time paradox and time can be hugely complex involving very complex maths, most of the physics must just be accepted by lesser mortals
Alan
Feynman diagram HFeynman diagram H
