Quizzes & Puzzles5 mins ago
Is This Quantum Physics Law Now Defunct ?
hi peeps, let me start by saying i am no scientist but i do have an inquizative mind, right here goes :) , since scientists have now found particals that can travel faster than the speed of light (neutrino's), what happens to that particals properties, and as as far as i am aware "the speed of light is 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second) and when an object moves at this speed, its mass will become infinite. Therefore, infinite energy will be required to move the object", so does this mean that this theory is now defunct, please answer in laymans terms as i said earlier i am no scientist, thanking peeps in advance for any replies
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I suspect he was thinking of neutrinos, given that in 2012 there was a suspicion that they'd been seen to travel faster than light. In the end, it was a (relatively) simple error that, once fixed, brought the measurement of their speed close to, but below, the speed of light. Shame, it would have been a lovely topic to discuss.
well thanks again for all of your comments really appreciate you lot taking time to answer, sorry but i have to ask another one :) old_geezer said "mass isn't an issue for massless particles" sureley everything has a mass for it to exist, sorry if this is a stupid question but like said i am not a scientist, once again thanking you for any replies in advance, this is all very interesting to me and i enjoy the conversations
Not a stupid question at all! Mass is probably one of the most complicated concepts in physics. I'm not even kidding when I say this.
Roughly speaking, though, stuff in the universe can be split into two types: energy and matter. Photons, and a few other things, carry energy around and that's it. They don't need to have a mass. You can kind of pretend that Einstein's E=mc^2 is in play here, because it's telling us that mass is "just" another way of carrying energy around.
Matter, on the other hand, is the stuff that has mass. It's a measure of actual substance, as opposed to being pure energy. There is no point in pretending that this isn't confusing, but if you start by trying to make this separation then I hope it helps: energy carriers don't need to have a mass, or a substance, in order to do their job.
Roughly speaking, though, stuff in the universe can be split into two types: energy and matter. Photons, and a few other things, carry energy around and that's it. They don't need to have a mass. You can kind of pretend that Einstein's E=mc^2 is in play here, because it's telling us that mass is "just" another way of carrying energy around.
Matter, on the other hand, is the stuff that has mass. It's a measure of actual substance, as opposed to being pure energy. There is no point in pretending that this isn't confusing, but if you start by trying to make this separation then I hope it helps: energy carriers don't need to have a mass, or a substance, in order to do their job.
"when an object moves at [the speed of light], its mass will become infinite."
This is a common mistake, which has been bouncing around more or less ever since Einstein wrote his first papers about Special Relativity. The particular problems are that:
1. An object either has a mass, or it does not, and the mass never changes no matter how fast the object is moving
2. What actually becomes infinite is the energy required to move an object at the speed of light. But this is only true if the object has a mass. E = mc^2 is an oft-abused equation, so I think it's become common to assume that if the energy is infinite then so is the mass, but it's not actually true.
3. If, on the other hand, the mass is zero, then the thing is already purely energy, and in fact the thing is already moving at the speed of light! This makes more sense than you think: it's simply the statement that "light travels at the sped of light".
This is a common mistake, which has been bouncing around more or less ever since Einstein wrote his first papers about Special Relativity. The particular problems are that:
1. An object either has a mass, or it does not, and the mass never changes no matter how fast the object is moving
2. What actually becomes infinite is the energy required to move an object at the speed of light. But this is only true if the object has a mass. E = mc^2 is an oft-abused equation, so I think it's become common to assume that if the energy is infinite then so is the mass, but it's not actually true.
3. If, on the other hand, the mass is zero, then the thing is already purely energy, and in fact the thing is already moving at the speed of light! This makes more sense than you think: it's simply the statement that "light travels at the sped of light".
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