E=mc2 Polling Question

[Koen1]

On the contrary, it is easy to turn a ship into pure energy form!

Nasa managed to do it with the Space Shuttle a few times already.


The problem is getting it back into structured material objects.

But you're right that E=mc^2 is an abbreviation of a larger fomula.
The rest of your story, especially the comparison to a vibrating washing machine,
is not something I can agree with easily. It comes eerily close to the new-age
vibrationology that is mostly wishfull thinking about vibrations magically playing
some vague role, but that has no real idea of the actual mechanism behind it.
To say "vibration makes movement easier" is just too superficial a conclusion.

Were this mess gets it wrong its that the speed of light is not always the same.
It can vary in the gravitational field to velocity as well as material it can pass through.

LOL
Since c arises from the structure of spacetime itself, and gravity is known to be
nothing more than a curvature in that spacetime geometry, the observed speed of
the photon in a gravitational field may, to an observer, seem to effectively increase
or decrease a little. This does not necessarily mean c actually changes. But the
curvature of spacetime causes us to observe a time dilation effect, which could
account for the observed difference.
It's like the "bending" of the path of light by gravitational fields: sure, we as observers
certainly do see the "path" of light being "bent", causing the effect of "gravitational
lensing", which can be empirically measured. Does that mean that the photons are
not moving forward in a straight line? No, it does not. The photons keep moving in a
perfectly straight line, but it is space itself that is curved, and this results in an effective
and observable "bend" in the path of the light. The photons don't "steer toward the right",
they keep a heading straight forward. But due to spacetime being curved, that is not
what we see.
Same thing with the material it passes through, although that also involves photon
interaction with the material. As soon as a photon is absorbed and emitted by any
atom, one may ask the question whether or not we are really talking about the same
photon... Is the emitted photon the same as the absorbed photon? If not, then the
light coming out of a physical material with which it has interacted is not at all the
same light that was passed into it, and then we're not talking about a single photon
that moves through empty space and experiences an increase or decrease in velocity,
but rather about how long it takes for photons to interact with the material before they
have passed entirely through the material. That's nothing to do with their absolute velocity.
In this case we simply have a difference between the absolute and intrinsic speed of light,
and the effectively observable speed of light in a specific reference frame and due to
interaction with matter.

But hey, what the main problem is, I think, is that these are all typically matters that
involve the interplay between and/or overlap of the theories of relativity and quantum physics,
and like I said before those are still not unified yet so they each handle their own
area of physics and cannot be easily combined. And that's what we (yes myself included)
seem to be trying to do here.
Perhaps we should first unify the theories before trying to say anything definitive about the results...

Regards,
Koen

[gravityblock]

@all:

The question is, Is Mass proportional to Energy?

Maybe take a look at - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass-energy_equivalence

For those who say it's not a complete formula, then please post the complete formula.

Taken from wikipedia:

While Einstein was not the first to propose a massâ€"energy relationship, and various similar formulas appeared before Einstein's theory, Einstein was the first to propose that the equivalence of mass and energy is a consequence of the symmetries of space and time.

The concept of massâ€"energy equivalence unites the concepts of conservation of mass and conservation of energy, allowing rest mass to be converted to forms of active energy (such as kinetic energy, heat, or light). Conversely, active energy in the form of kinetic energy or radiation can be converted to particles which have rest mass. The total amount of mass/energy in a closed system (as seen by a single observer) remains constant because energy cannot be created or destroyed and, in all of its forms, trapped energy exhibits mass. In relativity, mass and energy are two forms of the same thing, and neither one appears without the other.

[Low-Q]

Pay careful attention to the words in bold, or you will more than likely not catch the contradiction.

In Special Relativity Theory, mass converts to energy as an object approaches the speed of light.  If this were true, then instead of having infinite mass as the theory proposes, a spaceship should be massless at the speed of light.   However, if the spaceship were massless at the speed of light, then it would have no energy because the mass would be zero.

I do not see how physicists could have ignored this simple contradiction for 100 years.  No doubt, the die-hard relativists will come out swinging with arguments that there is relativistic mass, which is different from rest mass, or some other such nonsense.

Mass IS energy. If so, energy IS mass. So then energy is also affected by gravity. I guess then that energy has mass, as stated, but the speed of radiant energy is so high it does not have to be that massive to do a great work.
The energy in one single grape, or 1g mass, contains so much energy it can run 1500 normal housholds for 1 year with power. E=mC². So what are we discussing? Radiation is the very smallest "particle", and the only form of mass that can travel with the speed of light. But also this kind ov energy can travel slower than the speed of light - as low as 17ms. Yes seventeen meters per second. Even stand still under controlled conditions.

Energy as light, if densed enough it will create particles such as protons - a particle we are able to "see" and measure. But if light is the smallest and most elementary particle possible, only light or gravity can be used to determind it. If we can't determind light particles otherwise, doesn't mean it is massless.

So I guess physics doesn't contradicts itself after all.

Vidar

[brian334]

Rat,
Maybe the reason a particle traveling at a high rate of speed appears to gain
mass is because it is pushing and pulling gravity along with it.
When the particle crashes into something its momentum and the momentum
of the gravity it is pushing and pull appear to give the particle a larger mass
than it really has.
For this to be true gravity needs to have mass.

[Low-Q]

Rat,
Maybe the reason a particle traveling at a high rate of speed appears to gain
mass is because it is pushing and pulling gravity along with it.
When the particle crashes into something its momentum and the momentum
of the gravity it is pushing and pull appear to give the particle a larger mass
than it really has.
For this to be true gravity needs to have mass.

Well, mass isn't actually a "solid" material, but it only appears to be it - because energy is somehow captured in time. Everything around us is only energy, waves or what you call it. Mass is visible because the light waves is reflected or absorbed by it. So what we call mass, isn't actually mass. It is captured energy - a state that has an unimaginable capacity of energy.

This energy or mass is continously lost as it breaks down. The tiny amount of energy that radiates from every known matter will finally make the mass as we know it dissappear into space.

And that raise a question from where gravity comes from. It must then come from this captured energy. As energy travels between objects as well, objects will interact on eachother. I guess that is what gravity is. the denser an object is the greater the captured energy is, the greater the gravity is - it makes sense to me.

Maybe gravity, the question every scientist can never provide a good answer to, is maybe as simple as this energy change that appears between objects.

Another sleepless night

Vidar