Mass And Time Dialation

[36grit]

If mass is energy traveling at twice the speed of light, then wouldn't each individual atom radiate a time dialation wave?

[Don Blazys]

Energy can't travel faster than light. Nothing can travel faster than light,

(exept perhaps "tachyons", but they are strictly theoretical).

 

Don.

[CraigD]

If mass is energy traveling at twice the speed of light, then wouldn't each individual atom radiate a time dialation wave?

Where'd you get these ideas, 36grit? :QuestionM Can you give a link to a website, a book, or something?

 

I don't recognize them from any physics I know or have read, and can't really make sense of them.

 

There's no real dichotomy between mass and energy in modern physics, so any statement of the form "mass is energy doing X" or "energy is mass doing X" isn't conventionally sensible.

 

Time dilation is a phenomenon requiring an observer and an observed in motion relative to one another. It's not radiation in the way that light or a massive particle stream is, so it isn't conventionally sensible to talk about anything radiating it.

[Qfwfq]

If mass is energy traveling at twice the speed of light, then wouldn't each individual atom radiate a time dialation wave?

According to formal logic, this implication would be true because the antecedent is false and therefore it doesn't matter whether the consequent is true or false. The only fly in the ointment is that the consequent doesn't make much sense because "time dialation wave" doesn't, so it doesn't even make sense to say whether it is true or false.

 

This means the whole proposition isn't well-formed so it can't really be true, despite being an implication with a false antecedent.

 

:pirate:

[36grit]

Does the scientific community believe that: MCsquared equals E but that MCsquared is not E? And that gravitaional time dialation only exists in large bodies of mass floating in space but not the smallest bodies of mass existing in space? Throw a pebble in the ocean and will it not rise a slight amount? What is the difference between ice and steam? The heat or the acceleration of the mass partiticles?

Mass is energy at the speed of light squared. Since nothing in this matrix of space/time we call the universe can move faster than light their must be a time dialation experienced by the body of mass we call the atom.

[CraigD]

Does the scientific community believe that: MCsquared equals E but that MCsquared is not E?

Ah, I think I see where your questions is coming from.

 

The expression [math]E = M c^2[/math] (or, if you prefer [math]M c^2 = E[/math]) describes mass-energy equivalence. It doesn’t say “mass is energy traveling at twice the speed of light”, but rather than mass can be converted to energy, or energy to mass.

 

For example, adding 1 J of energy to a 1 kg body by accelerating it by slightly less than [math]\sqrt{2} \,\mbox{m/s}[/math], results in its mass increasing by exactly [math]\frac{1}{89875517873681764} \,\mbox{kg}[/math] (see if you can work this out yourself – only simple algebra with rational numbers is needed)

 

Another example: the electron of hydrogen atom undergoes a H-alpha transition, emitting an approximately [math]3.027 \times 10^{-19} \,\mbox{J}[/math] photon. The mass of the hydrogen atom decreases by about [math]3.368 \times 10^{-36} \,\mbox{kg}[/math], about 0.0000002012% (this is a little more challenging to calculate – you need to do some unit conversion and use Plank's law).

 

Hopefully these example give you a better sense of the relationship of mass and energy – the aren’t different kinds of stuff, but two “aspects” of a single fundamental stuff, mass-energy.

 

And that gravitaional time dialation only exists in large bodies of mass floating in space but not the smallest bodies of mass existing in space?

Gravitational time dilation [math]\frac{t}{t_f}[/math] of a clock measuring duration [math]t[/math] distance [math]r[/math] from the center of mass of a non-rotating body of mass [math]M[/math] relative to a clock measuring duration [math]t_f[/math] is given by

 

[math]\frac{t}{t_f} = \sqrt{1 - \frac{k M}{r}}[/math]

where [math]k = \frac{2 G}{c^2}[/math]

 

This holds for bodies large or small, but as the equation shows, the [math]r[/math] that results in a given [math]\frac{t}{t_f}[/math] is directly proportional to [math]M[/math].

 

For example, time dilation near the surface of the sun is about 0.99999789 (about 0.2 sec/day) . To get the same time dilation around single hydrogen atom, [math]r[/math] would have to be about [math]5.8 \times 10^{-49} \,\mbox{m}[/math]. This is very, very small, much smaller than an atom.

 

Ignoring the detailed particle physics of it, the reason significant gravitational time dilation is only observable around large bodies has to do with a scaling relationship. Assuming a constant density, mass is proportional to volume, which is proportional to radius³. So scaling a body like a star down to atomic size reduces its mass by the cube of the length ratio.

 

36grit, playing around with examples like these is a good way to get an intuitive grasp of modern physics concepts such as mass-energy and time dilation. I recommend it highly.