If mass increases as an object approaches the speed of light, wouldn't it become a black hole?

Question

Is it correct to say that an object's mass increases with its speed until it reaches the speed of light, at which point the mass is infinite?

If so, doesn't this mean that the object's gravity also increases?

As it approaches the speed of light, shouldn't the object turn into a black hole? Due to its incredible mass and gravity?

Will the size of the object matter? Perhaps a billiard ball would have to be going at the speed of light to achieve this effect, while a large planet might become a black hole at only 90,000 km/s?

Bonus Question- is my answer to this question okay? http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/;_ylt=Aqu4X9dggkkv2l6HRgeBg2kSBgx.?link=answer&.crumb=uHuYKTr5DcP&qid=20070102131855AAGhdnJ&.done=http%253A%252F%252Fuk.answers.yahoo.com%252Fquestion%252Findex%253Fqid%253D20070102131855AAGhdnJ

Thanks to all the Answerers-- you were all great! I'm having a hard time choosing between the last three, because each had something that really stood out about their answer.

thegreatdilberto-- for mentioning the singularity and explaining the relationship between kinetic energy and increased mass

aorton27-- for reminding me that the increased mass is dependent on FRAME OF REFERENCE and giving a good illustration of how this works. Finally, very interesting point about being able to see different things from the surface of a massive object.

scythian1- thanks for pointing out that the person in the moving frame of reference doesn't experience the increase in mass, and also for the fascinating description of what the moving observer would see. I'd love to read that Scientific American article.

It's going to be a hard time choosing between your three, and I'd also like to mention again that everyone else had great answers too! Thank you very much!!!

And thank you to each of you who taught me that the mass would become energy waves at the speed of light-- very good to know!!! However, my question was about an object APPROACHING the speed of light. Still, I hadn't realized that is what it would do!

Answer 1

Mass doesn't increase when speed increases! Due to the curvature of space when you are approaching speed of light you are 'digging in' so it gives you the impression of increasing mass.

Imagine driving an extremely fast car on a long long road that has a very small incline. The quicker the car goes the more the suspension will sink down, the more the tires will be loaded down and the more friction will be induced. Mass isn't changing to cause this increase of downforce but rather the slight inclination of the road is. It can be very easy to say the mass is increasing but in reality is the curvature of space giving you that impression.

You can bend space two ways. With velocity or with mass. The more bent space is the harder it is to move the object. Kind of like rolling a bowling ball on a soft matress where it sinks in compared to rolling it on a flat surface.

"Will the size of the object matter? Perhaps a billiard ball would have to be going at the speed of light to achieve this effect, while a large planet might become a black hole at only 90,000 km/s?"

Yes, the mass of the object matters. It would require the same energy to move a planet to speed of light even though it would only be moving 90,000km/h as it would to move a small spaceship to speed of light.

It is the deformation of the 4th dimension dilates time and determines the speed of light. If you could somehow sit on a much more massive object such as a neutron star you would see things with the naked eye that would be impossible to see on earth. You would visibly be able to see black holes for instance.

Answer 2

You are correct that as an object gains velocity its mass increases. This is a result of Einsteins equation E = mc^2. As an object gains velocity it gains energy that is stored in its kinetic energy. So this energy can be equated to mass. That is why a constant force does not produce a constant acceleration. So as an object increases its kinetic energy it requires more force to accelerate it.

So if an object with any rest mass were to reach the speed of light it would require an infinite amount of force to accelerate it to this velocity. Since force and energy are related it would also require an infinite amount of energy. Since this energy would be conserved as kinetic energy this would infinitely increase the mass of the object.

Because the force of gravity is governed by the mass of an object and the distance away from it this means that the gravity felt by an object moving at the speed of light would increase. I don't know if it would become a black hole though. As an object gets closer to the speed of light there is a phenomenon called length contraction. This causes the object to, apparently, get smaller in the direction of its travel. If the object were traveling at the speed of light the Lorentz factor would be undefined and so I don't know how it would look. A black hole has a singularity at its heart, this object would not have a singularity. I would have a height but an undefined width, and so could not be a point. Because of this the size of an object doesn't really matter, it is mostly the mass that is of consequence.

It should be noted that all of these effects would only be visible from an outside reference frame. If you were in a ship moving at the speed of light you would not notice anything changing. At least as far as I know.

Answer 3

How true that is depends on how near to the speed of light you mean. Even medium energy particle accelerators such as the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility get particles awfully close to the speed of light, but they don't produce black holes. I suspect that your question is based on speculation about the consequences of firing up the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN laboratory, which is quite a high energy facility. It might be true that particles from the LHC could have become massive enough to create microscopic black holes; the LHC seems to be sort of borderline, and scientists still argue over details. Don't, however, confuse these microscopic black holes with the huge honking black holes in space that form when large stars (>15 or so times the size of our sun) collapse. These microscopic black holes would still have only the mass of a tiny insect, and thus they wouldn't cause everything on Earth to be caught up in their gravitational field. They can still be black holes because they have that mass in a very small volume, but they just don't have the same pull at "normal" distances as the big black holes that used to be stars. Besides, these microscopic black holes are predicted to disintegrate pretty quickly, so they wouldn't have any real time to accumulate mass even from very nearby particles. Without accumulating mass, they wouldn't be dangerous.

Answer 4

The answer is "no", because creation of a black hole requires a threshold amount of REST mass density. If I were a spaceship going nearly the speed of light, my spaceship and I still weigh the same in my moving frame of reference. And, no, curved spacetime is not relative, so that should I and my spaceship turn into a giant sucking black hole to you, it would not look like to me that I'm still in my speedy spaceship. Recall that the first principle of special relativity is that I cannot determine what is my own speed, unless I checked it relative to others. So, I wouldn't expect to collapse into a black hole while "going near light speed" any more than I would expect that to happen while just hanging around.

It's very difficult for any planet to orbit near light speed about a star because it's an accelerated frame of reference, unless it were orbiting a supermassive black hole near its event horizon. I should say "swirling into", because constant orbit wouldn't be possible in the first place. In the short time before the planet is sucked into the black hole (waiting to surprise me in my speedy spacecraft inside the black hole, I suppose?), the universe will appear to be divided into a starry field on one side, warped and crowded and blue ahead in the direction of the planet's travel, and the black hole will appear to be an infinite plane on the other side, and planet would be racing towards the horizon. Scientific American did an article about this one time, but I forget which year.

Answer 5

I have often wondered the same thing - and I even proposed a similar question a while back.

It only seems reasonable to me that as the mass increased at a significant percentage of light speed, but before it achieved light speed, the enormous gravitational force would necessarily collapse onto itself - creating a black hole.

Just another reason that light speed will never be achieved by an object with any mass.

Again, thanks to Einstein and his relativity formulas.

Answer 6

It is logical that if you could view light from the rear, that you would be viewing a black hole. As the origin of the light is stationary with the projection moving at the speed of light gaining mass to the point of infinity.

Your thoughts are on the right track at the very least.

Answer 7

If you were on or near the object that was moving that fast and you were stationary relative to it, you wouldn't experience any gravity increase. If the object was moving at near the speed of light relative to you, its mass would increase from your perspective, but would its gravity? I really don't know. It wouldn't become a black hole, because the mass increase is only relative to you.

Answer 8

If the theory is true, then the mass would become infinite at the speed of light, which is why it is not possible to travel at the speed of light, and why it doesn't become a black hole.
It does not however explain why you are not smashed to pulp by every single photon that hits you (traveling as it does, at the speed of light).
Back to the drawing board I guess.

Answer 9

Is it correct to say that an object's mass increases with its speed until it reaches the speed of light, at which point the mass is infinite?
Q. If that were true would the photon not have an infintie mass

Answer 10

According to the wave particel duality theory when such speeds occur an object beomes a photon of energy in the form of an electromagnetic wave. As pure energy it would not have a mass as such and therefore not create a gravitational field.

It's similar to the theory applied to electrons and their orbitals in chemistry.

Oh size would'nt matter and Black Holes are created when Giant stars collapse. Stars are immense balls of energy with nuclear fusion occuring at outstanding rates when they collapse the energy in a sense is converted into dense matter.