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From: royt@gitpyr.UUCP (Roy M. Turner)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: FTL Travel
Message-ID: <584@gitpyr.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Jul-85 10:40:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.584
Posted: Fri Jul 19 10:40:25 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jul-85 21:13:56 EDT
References: <2702@topaz.ARPA> <15754@watmath.UUCP>
Reply-To: royt@gitpyr.UUCP (Roy M. Turner)
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 33
Summary: 

In article <15754@watmath.UUCP> jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner) writes:
>
>P.S. Physicists are greatly disquieted by the suggestion that F=ma
>could ever be untrue.  Therefore they usually keep the equation and
>redefine the "m" (mass) so that the equation still works at high
>speeds.  They say that a moving particle has a higher mass than a
>particle at rest; as a particle moves faster and faster, its mass
>increases, until at the speed of light, its mass is infinite, which
>is it would take infinite force to increase the particle's speed.
>Of course, then the physicists have to explain why motion adds to
>a particle's mass.  Their explanation is that the kinetic energy
>of the particle is as good as mass, and indeed, energy is the same
>as mass for the purposes of relativity.  Put in equation form,
>this is E=m.  And if you use archaic units of measurement, it turns
>out that you need a conversion factor in this equation, so you get
>E=mc**2.

So mass increases...why not?  It makes as much sense for a physical "constant"
of a body not to be constant as it does for an invariant law to be changeable,
no?  After all, as a body approaches the speed of light, its length decreases 
and time slows...why not funny stuff with mass, too?

Roy

-- 
The above opinions aren't necessarily those of etc, etc...but they
should be!!

Roy Turner
(a transplanted Kentucky hillbilly)
School of Information and Computer Science
Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!royt