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jonnyread
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I just read today in Stephen's Hawking book that the energy of an object is increased with its acceleration and that in turn increases the mass because enegry and mass are interchangeable because of E=mc2. Therefor it takes more energy to increase the acceleration of an object going fast because of that additional mass.
He writes that when an object comes closer to the speed of light it acquires infinite mass and therefor would take infininte energy to increase the acceleration to the speed of light.
This bothered me for three reasons.
1. I remember reading in a book called Relativity Visualized that why we nothing is able to go faster than the speed of light is not clear. The author of that book suggested his own "myth" as to why things cannot go faster than the speed of light. So who is right?
2. I might just be showing off by ignorance here, but intuitively I can't grasp why energy which is carrying an object in a certain direction should cause it to be harder to have the object accelerated in the same direction.
3. I also wonder why it is that it happens to be that at the speed of light the object acquires infinite mass?
I hope I made my questions clear.
Thanks
Jonathan
He writes that when an object comes closer to the speed of light it acquires infinite mass and therefor would take infininte energy to increase the acceleration to the speed of light.
This bothered me for three reasons.
1. I remember reading in a book called Relativity Visualized that why we nothing is able to go faster than the speed of light is not clear. The author of that book suggested his own "myth" as to why things cannot go faster than the speed of light. So who is right?
2. I might just be showing off by ignorance here, but intuitively I can't grasp why energy which is carrying an object in a certain direction should cause it to be harder to have the object accelerated in the same direction.
3. I also wonder why it is that it happens to be that at the speed of light the object acquires infinite mass?
I hope I made my questions clear.
Thanks
Jonathan