rootone
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I think that the concept of a negative mass is silly.
By analogy, a velocity of less than zero is silly.
By analogy, a velocity of less than zero is silly.
rootone said:I think that the concept of a negative mass is silly.
By analogy, a velocity of less than zero is silly.
rootone said:By analogy, a velocity of less than zero is silly.
Elroch said:An Earth and a negative Earth-mass object so close they are nearly touching for a year will reach relativistic speeds (1g x 1 year is roughly the speed of light).
Elroch said:the artificial, delicately balanced "runaway" situation is completely irrelevant to cosmic rays as stands, and Franes should have realized this if that is what he meant.
PeterDonis said:If the bound is too low, then Farnes's model predicts that such pairs can never produce a positive mass particle with high enough kinetic energy to account for cosmic rays at all.
Hi Elroch:Elroch said:For velocities to rise indefinitely, it would be necessary for the masses to be perfectly matched and the particles to have exactly zero initial relative velocity, so it simply would not occur naturally.
Well, both particles accelerate in the direction of the positive mass particle but, if the masses are equal, their relative velocity remains constant. So, given your description, they get further apart. The distance between them is thus O(time) and the interaction forces and the accelerations are O(time-2). So the velocities are asymptotically constant (the integral of an inverse square is bounded), as is also true for two positive masses that are not bound together (For anyone not familiar with the terminology, google "big O notation" and "asymptotic").Buzz Bloom said:Hi Elroch:
I do not understand the above quote. I wonder if you would please explain in some detail what would happen if there were a +mass particle near a -mass particle, and the initial conditions are that relative to the center of mass, the velocity vectors of these two particles have the same magnitude and opposite directions. Note that the initial relative velocities are not zero. I do not have the skills to do the math with any confidence that I will not make mistakes, but intuitively it seems that if the two particles initially are moving towards each other, then the results would be that particles would follow each other at an accelerating speed which eventually would overwhelm the initial velocity.
Regards,
Buzz
Hi Elroch:Elroch said:Well, both particles accelerate in the direction of the positive mass particle but, if the masses are equal, their relative velocity remains constant. So, given your description, they get further apart. The distance between them is thus O(time) and the interaction forces and the accelerations are O(time-2). So the velocities are asymptotically constant
Yes. but mass doesn't have a direction.PeterDonis said:Not if you take direction into account.
If you mean a magnitude of velocity less than zero is silly, that's true.