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colinr
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I've heard that it is thought that Neurinos are massless paricles, but I'm now hearing that they have kinetic energy.
Can something with no mass have kinetic energy?
Can something with no mass have kinetic energy?
zefram_c said:Kinetic energy is a classical concept that has little use in a relativistic framework. Good quantities to use are rest energy (Lorentz invariant) and total energy (Lorentz covariant). ...
Ooops, sorry. My terminology was very sloppy on that one. I meant that the four-momentum transforms as a Lorentz vector between frames of reference. This would not be true for the kinetic energy, which would transform in a more complicated manner.nrqed said:Could you tell me what you mean by a quantity being "covariant"?
I thought that "covariant" made only sense when referring to an *equation*, not a quantity. An equation is covariant when the two sides transform the same way under Lorentz transformations (in SR) or general coordinate transformations (in GR).
colinr said:I've heard that it is thought that Neurinos are massless paricles, but I'm now hearing that they have kinetic energy.
Can something with no mass have kinetic energy?
Neurinos are subatomic particles that are similar to neutrinos but with different properties.
Being massless means that neurinos have no rest mass, or mass when they are not moving. However, they do have energy and momentum.
Scientists have conducted experiments, such as the Super-Kamiokande experiment, that have shown that neurinos have very little mass, if any at all. Additionally, the Standard Model of particle physics predicts that neurinos are massless.
The fact that neurinos are massless has implications in various fields of physics, such as cosmology and particle physics. For example, it could help explain the abundance of neutrinos in the universe and the behavior of particles in the early universe.
While the current evidence suggests that neurinos are massless, there is always the possibility of new discoveries or theories that could challenge this concept. However, for now, it is widely accepted that neurinos are indeed massless particles.