The discussion revolves around the evidence and implications of mass change in the context of Special Relativity (SR). Participants explore various aspects of mass change, its historical context, and its relevance in modern physics, particularly in particle accelerators.
Participants express differing views on the significance and applicability of mass change in SR. There is no consensus on whether mass change is a valid concept within the framework of Special Relativity, leading to an ongoing debate.
Some statements rely on historical interpretations and definitions of mass, which may not align with contemporary understandings in physics. The discussion also reflects varying interpretations of the role of mass change in practical applications versus theoretical predictions.
webb202 said:I know that the example of time dilation and length contraction due to Special Relativity is usually given as the mountain top / sea level decays of muons created by cosmic rays but what is the evidence for mass change?
When designing particle accelerators the designers need to take the relativistic mass increase into account. See the outreach page at the Large Hadron Collider atwebb202 said:...what is the evidence for mass change
Basically the relativistic mass of a particle increases with velocity and tends to infinity as the velocity approaches the speed of light.
See alsoNow if you were traveling along with the object, even at the speed of light, it would appear to have its ordinary, rest mass. It's only to the outside world that it appears to have a greater mass. In other words, it's only if the object is moving *relative to you* that you see a difference--which is why we call it relativity. If you're moving along with the object, we say that you are in the object's reference frame. A stationary observer has a different reference frame.
Of course, it may be possible that special relativity is wrong, and something else happens at extremely high velocities. But big particle accelerators like at Stanford and in Switzerland use special relativity every day, and it's been perfectly correct even for the fastest particles we can accelerate.
Where did you get the idea that they never use it? Just look above. I've also seen many other examples of it. For example; A simple relativistic paradox about electrostatic energy, Wolfgang Rindler, Jack Denur, Am. J. Phys., 56 (9), September 1988, page 795.Shyan said:Actually mass change is not one of the things that SR predicts, its just something that some textbooks on relativity introduce and I don't know why they do that because they never use it.
Shyan said:Actually mass change is not one of the things that SR predicts, its just something that some textbooks on relativity introduce and I don't know why they do that because they never use it.
Its only that linear momentum and kinetic energy are different for different inertial observers which is like Newtonian mechanics just the transformation is different.
Devils said:Correct me if I'm wrong, but I though mass change had been derived in the late 1800s. The example I seem to remember is change in mass when the energy in a spring changes.