Light Speed

.

First diagram above taken from Spin Velocity http://www.nevyns-lab.com/mathis/papers/spin-velocity.html.


Second diagram taken from http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Relativ/ltrans.html#c1.

c as Speed Limit
The speed of light c is said to be the speed limit of the universe because nothing can be accelerated to the speed of light with respect to you. A common way of describing this situation is to say that as an object approaches the speed of light, its mass increases and more force must be exerted to produce a given acceleration. There are difficulties with the "changing mass" perspective, and it is generally preferrable to say that the relativistic momentum and relativistic energy approach infinity at the speed of light. Since the net applied force is equal to the rate of change of momentum and the work done is equal to the change in energy, it would take an infinite time and an infinite amount of work to accelerate an object to the speed of light. (Sorry, Captain Kirk. We can't give you warp speed!)

Given that radius and energy are equivalent, both diagrams agree.
.

I really don't like the mass increase argument. I think it is a dodge and is only required because they refuse to give the photon any mass. I have another way of seeing it that makes more sense, at least to me. It also only requires the definition of velocity which seems to be becoming a common theme to my musings.

It basically comes down to how force is transferred. I stick to collisions, since I want a mechanical model. Therefore, force is just the transfer of velocity between colliding objects. This is the old way physics used to work, so I am not coming up with anything new here, but I do have a slight difference in how I use that.

As I have said before, acceleration is not a property of any object. It is just the result of many collisions, each adding velocity to the target object. So, for any given acceleration, you have to ask what is being thrown at the target to accelerate it. If we want to accelerate something to the speed of light, then we can only throw things at it that are already traveling at that speed. Therefore, we must be using photons.

Now, the problem is that as the target accelerates, the force we are applying causes less and less change in the velocity of that target. Physics has chosen to interpret that as a mass increase. The target gets heavier and heavier so the force, being mass x acceleration, causes less change. I, on the other hand, choose to see it a different way. I recognize that the velocity difference between bullet and target is getting smaller and smaller until the target and the bullets are at the same speed, if this is possible (the mass does have some play in this) and when that is the case, there is no collision to impart any force. If the target is more massive than a photon, then that mass will limit the speed accordingly.

This is caused by the acceleration getting smaller, not the mass getting bigger. Since the acceleration term is actually the difference in velocity between target and bullet, it naturally gets smaller as the target is accelerated. The velocity of the photons is not changing, but the velocity of the target definitely is. That was the point all along.

If the force transferred by each photon is getting smaller and smaller, but we want to keep accelerating it, then we only have one option: increase the number of collisions by increasing the number of photons. That is why it takes more energy to accelerate something as its velocity rises. The mass is not changing, the difference in velocity is.

I have to ask why physicists insist on changing the wrong things? Mass increase here, negative mass in a recent post, time and length changing in Relativity. These are things that should not change in this way, but they change them anyway! Absurd, maybe even perverse. I put it down to them being mathematicians rather than physicists. If you just look at the math, then it is all just variables and you can change them, make them negative, re-normalize them or whatever you want to. They are not real things. When you force yourself to be mechanical, you can no longer just look at the math. Reality comes crashing down on you.

I will point out that through stacked spins a particle can actually increase what we call mass. That is by adding a new velocity, a new motion, and I have no problem with that. If we are accelerating a particle, then this can happen and it will slow the target down because it now collides with more ambient photons and this creates drag. But this problem of needing more energy to accelerate something comes up even without particles. It happens in your car, in your body, in rockets we send to outer space or even just within the atmosphere. So we don't always have the ability to stack spins and increase the mass that way. No matter what problem we are looking at though, we always have a transference of velocity and we must look at the differences in velocity to determine what is going on. Not abstract things like acceleration. Not mass, which should be fairly stable for any large object. Velocity is everything!

Maybe I have a new paper to write.

Nevyn wrote:Maybe I have a new paper to write.

You really do. Take what you've written there and expand on it a bit, and you're gold. That made perfect sense to me and was very straightforward and helpful.

I'm a bit worried that I have missed something.

I have a tentative idea of a paper that could be appropriately titled 'The World According to Nevyn'. I see the need to lay out the foundations of my thoughts and define low level concepts like mass, acceleration, force, pressure, etc. Looking at that list, it will probably be a series of papers as each one needs a close analysis. My thoughts aren't quite solid enough yet, though. They need to congeal out of a foggy mist. Some of it is already on this site but others still need a lot of work. Writing the papers is probably a good way to get that ball rolling though.