If you take a bowling ball and a ping-pong ball and dropped them in a vacum they would both fall at the SAME speed. Mass plays no part in the speed of the objects. So how in the world would one's mass have to be increased to achieve the speed of light? Gravity is a result of lots of mass, the bigger the mass the more the gravity. I can see incresing power to get closer to the speed of light but how does that increase one's mass? Does a car going at 100 mph have more mass than a car going at 20mph? It may have more energy but not more mass. Can someone help me with this or point me in the right direction?
2007-07-25 22:40:58 · 4 answers · asked by KELLY S 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
Well, if a car moving at 100 mph has more energy than a car moving 20 mph, and energy = mass x speed of light squared, ( e= mc^2) then speed of light = square root of (energy divided by mass) not sure if this helps
2007-07-25 23:01:10 · answer #1 · answered by hephaestus675111 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
it's not true that you have to increase mass to reach the speed of light. any body that possesses mass CANNOT reach the speed of light (according to einstein). According to special relitivity the closer an object gets to the speed of light the more it's mass will increase AS A RESULT OF IT'S SPEED. You don't have to increase it's mass in order to do that!
However, the faster it goes and consequently the heavier it gets the harder it is to increase it's speed further. Ultimately, it would be IMPOSSIBLE to accelerate it to the speed of light as you would need an infinite amount of energy to do it.
Note: since a bowling ball is more massive that a ping pong ball, with a given amount of energy you would be able to get the ping pong ball to a faster speed. In gravity the force on the balls would be proportional to their inertia so they fall at the same acceleration. I THINK this would also be the case in a black hole where relativity would be taken into consideration for the same reasons
2007-07-26 00:12:02 · answer #2 · answered by tuthutop 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
the huge amount of energy required to accelerate any mass to the speed of light is converted into mass and stored by the accelerating mass.
2007-07-29 06:08:05 · answer #3 · answered by johnandeileen2000 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
mass = mo/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) where mo is the mass at rest v the velocity and c the velocity of light,
You see that as v approaches to c m approaches to infinity
2007-07-26 02:27:18 · answer #4 · answered by santmann2002 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋