Can mass be created or destroyed?

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Whitestar
Yes, but what form? Atomic energy?


Whitestar

It's a congealed form. If you congeal a lot of energy into one point, you get matter (that's as basic as I can get it).

 

[Whitestar]

Originally posted by Mentat
It's a congealed form. If you congeal a lot of energy into one point, you get matter (that's as basic as I can get it).

But if you were to convert someone into energy and reconvert him or her energy back into matter, would it still be the same person with the same personality, i.e. would he or she survive the procedure considering that matter and energy are both interconvertible, or would it be a replica?


Whitestar

 

[jr]

you don't destroy energy but you can change the energy into mass
and you can also never create energy but you can change mass into energy

 

[jr]

changing mass into energy can be done by nuclear fission or nuclear fusion

changing energy into mass can be done by speeding the object to the speed of light when the object reaches the speed of light it can't go any faster then the object's mass will increase (this would take quite a lot of energy to do this)

 

[elas]

Extract from Enc. Britannica

With the advent of relativity physics (1905), mass was first recognized as equivalent to energy. The total energy of a system of high-speed particles includes not only their rest mass but also the very significant increase in their mass as a consequence of their high speed. After the discovery of relativity, the energy-conservation principle has alternatively been named the conservation of mass-energy or the conservation of total energy.

When the principle seemed to fail, as it did when applied to the type of radioactivity called beta decay (spontaneous electron ejection from atomic nuclei), physicists accepted the existence of a new subatomic particle, the neutrino, that was supposed to carry off the missing energy rather than reject the conservation principle. Later, the neutrino was experimentally detected.

Energy conservation, however, is more than a general rule that persists in its validity; it can be shown to follow mathematically from the uniformity of time. If one moment of time were peculiarly different from any other moment, identical physical phenomena occurring at different moments would require different amounts of energy, so thatenergy would not be conserved.

I note that 'increase in mass' is attributed to 'increase in speed' without any explanation as to why mass increases with speed, does anyone know why?

 

[pmb]

Originally posted by jr
changing mass into energy can be done by nuclear fission or nuclear fusion

changing energy into mass can be done by speeding the object to the speed of light when the object reaches the speed of light it can't go any faster then the object's mass will increase (this would take quite a lot of energy to do this)

Regarding changing mass into energy - see
http://www.geocities.com/physics_world/sr/nuclear_energy.htm

The amount of energy and the amount of mass both before and after the nuclear fission is the same. Nothing changes except the makeup of the energy. Mass-energy changes to other forms. May I assume that's what you mean?

The changing of mass into energy is not quite correct. This was explained in the year following the detonation of the first atomic bombs in an article called

"A Relativistic Misconception," C.R. Eddy, Science 104, pages 303-304 (1946)

For details on this I recommend
"Concepts of Mass in Contemporary Physics and Philosophy," Max Jammer, Princeton University Press, (2000)

I've created a few derivations myself on the E = mc^2 thing. See

http://www.geocities.com/physics_world/sr/mass_energy_equiv.htm

and "A simple derivation of E = mc^2," http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0308039

Although I've been told that the derivation wasn't as simple as I thought. The idea is simple - the calculations not so simple I guess


Pete

 

[elas]

On my home site I have added an explanation of mass that should be acceptable in either current theory or my own concept.
http://elasticity2.tripod.com/s38.htm