E=mc^2 Math Fail by Bytemite

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E=mc^2 Math Fail

POSTED BY: BYTEMITE
UPDATED: Friday, December 16, 2011 07:01
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Tuesday, December 13, 2011 5:19 PM

I was just thinking about a common interpretation of the *special relativity equation, and I realized: it seems like physicists have their math wrong.

So light is a massless particle-wave, and (except maybe for certain neutrinos MAYBE), the fastest thing in the universe. According to scientists, for another material to approach the speed of light, it has to be massless itself (neutrinos are considered as good as).

Here's my issue. Simple algebra and rearranging the equation leads to E/m = c^2

E/zero, ANY measure of energy, is not c^2. It's infinity. Similarly, a mass of zero leads to Energy to achieve that equaling zero, yet I think that light itself has measurable energy. The equation seems to break down both at zero mass AND speeds faster than light.

Maybe I've gotten rusty with physics and I don't remember some explanation for this.

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Tuesday, December 13, 2011 6:58 PM

CANTTAKESKY

I'm no physicist, but this is what little I know.

The full equation is:

E2 = p2c2 + m2c4, where p = momentum

If mass = 0, then E = pc.

E = mc2 only holds for massive particles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity
Scroll down to mass energy equivalence.

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"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Tuesday, December 13, 2011 8:12 PM

BYTEMITE

Huh. I've used the E=Mc^2 relativity equation before in some chemistry calculations, but not special relativity.

I guess that does make some more sense... But another problem comes to mind, both parts of that equation STILL involve mass.

Momentum is just mass times velocity. So the terms all still go to zero and break down.

EDIT: I've forgotten most of this so I was going by what's in my science magazine that inspired this line of thinking, and they wrote E=mc^2 is general relativity. Its not, general relativity has to do with gravity and the way it bends space time.

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Tuesday, December 13, 2011 8:18 PM

BYTEMITE

I'm having to remind myself as I go here. Apparently E=mc^2 holds for the inherent energy of an atom. So when I was using E=mc^2 to calculate energy output I was working with hydrogen fusion reactions.

This makes some more sense. It's not intended to account for anything without mass. Nor does it really describe getting any mass up to approaching light speed (though scientists seem to think it implies it). Rather, it describes how much energy is in some amount of mass.

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Wednesday, December 14, 2011 12:28 AM

DREAMTROVE

It's going to break down on a quantum mechanical level, which Einstein was aware of, a fact which really irritated him. It will likely break down on a higher level as well. I've noticed that cosmologists make an awful lot of exceptions for the expanding universe, so called, and orbiting objects, high density black bodies like black holes, and things which appear to actually approach the speed of light or surpass it. My recollection of working through how he got there was that he was as much assuming the speed of light as a limit as proving it.

I don't think he's infallible, I think TPTB hold him to be so because he gave them the atom bomb, and they love him for that; but it does provide us with a couple of useful things: one, a relation of internal energy, kinetic energy and math; the other a notion of how much resistance we will actually run into if we swim through this soup called space.

My suspicion is that space is made up of, or defined by, energy strands that run across all of space, and get tangled up like a ball of yarn, and those tangles form various energies and particles that make up matter. If it were an infinite field of tangled yarn, then it would be conceptually difficult to move one ball of yarn through the mesh.

If we were to use a simple newtonian physics model we could possibly predict that with enough energy we could propel a ship across the atlantic in 10 minutes, but in practice we find this is not so. We all know the reason why, but I think that if you're gnawing over the idea of traveling faster than the speed of light, you'll run into this same problem, and the solution is to find another way to do it.

For instance, if you were in the field of yarn, and you could pull on a string of yarn, you could twang it to create vibrations that would resonate across the universe, which could be picked up somewhere else, which is perhaps by way of saying the transporter might be more feasible than the warp drive. Another possibility is wormholes, but I suspect the practical application would find that the gravitational pressure inside a wormhole vastly exceeds anything that any human built craft could withstand, and the diameter of a wormhold could reach nanometers towards the center, which is going to create a huge distortion on the craft and its contents, which would be lucky to come out as jelly on the other side. Another possibility is wormhole "surfing" by going on the outside of the wormole, through the space distorted by it, but similar problems might haunt you.

All of which brings us down to the easiest way to visit an earth-like planet that's 600 light years away is to change humans to make them survive 600 years, which is bound to be far easier than engineering them to survive being compressed to a nanometer or transmitted as data across space.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Wednesday, December 14, 2011 3:59 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
It's not intended to account for anything without mass. Nor does it really describe getting any mass up to approaching light speed (though scientists seem to think it implies it). Rather, it describes how much energy is in some amount of mass.

Right. Rest mass of massive particles.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Wednesday, December 14, 2011 4:24 PM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
My suspicion is that space is made up of, or defined by, energy strands that run across all of space, and get tangled up like a ball of yarn, and those tangles form various energies and particles that make up matter.

Notice how I am NOT going to naysay you because you don't have a logical path mapped out from point A to the Ball of Yarn.

It's an interesting idea and worthy of further scientific investigation.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Wednesday, December 14, 2011 4:29 PM

BYTEMITE

It's basically string theory.

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Wednesday, December 14, 2011 4:45 PM

DREAMTROVE

CTS

Touche.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Wednesday, December 14, 2011 6:00 PM

BYTEMITE

Admittedly, I'm not very convinced by string theory myself.

Any more than I am about the Higgs boson, dark matter, or dark energy.

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Thursday, December 15, 2011 4:21 PM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Admittedly, I'm not very convinced by string theory myself.

Any more than I am about the Higgs boson, dark matter, or dark energy.

Yeah. Dark matter and dark energy seem to be some sort of physics "magic" they invented to avoid facing the possibility that the Law of Gravity may have some holes. Big holes.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Thursday, December 15, 2011 5:41 PM

DREAMTROVE

I agree that dark matter is a patch, but I don't have a problem with string theory. It makes sense to me. Space has to come from somewhere.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Friday, December 16, 2011 5:35 AM

BYTEMITE

The only positive thing I can say about string theory is that it's based on good math, but the downside is we have no idea how to design an experiment to test for it.

Though certain interpretations of it might explain away the need for dark matter and dark energy.

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Friday, December 16, 2011 5:48 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

These concepts are so beyond my ken that I can only oggle at the rest of you in dumb incomprehension.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Friday, December 16, 2011 6:13 AM

BYTEMITE

Join the science team Anthony, join ussss. You too can participate in obscure conversations about math and the nature of reality. Trepanning is optional.

But, yeah. So, you know that there are some main forces that govern pretty much everything we've encountered in the universe. There's the electromagnetic force, gravity, and two obscure forces that have to do with the nucleus of atoms, the strong force and the weak force. One of the big things in science is to find one equation (or a simulation of the circumstance in which such an equation could be produced) which will show that all of these forces are actually the SAME force on some level or another.

Anything that tries to do that is called a Unified Field Theory or a "Theory of Everything". String Theory is one of them, it's trying to combine general relativity (macro scale gravity, EM force, and space-time continuum) with quantum physics (micro-scale subatomic particles).

It does this by re-envisioning certain particles as oscillating lines instead of points. But, see, the other parts of those lines exist on higher dimensions than humans are consciously aware of, so we only ever see them as points, and the interaction of the lines between those extra dimensions is what gives a particular line it's various traits and determines is subatomic particle identity. And all those particles interact with each other in interesting and fascinating ways, including some theoretical particles like the Higgs boson which interacts with other particles and gives them the attribute of having mass, and some just plain weird ones that are kinda rare and we don't really know what they do.

The thing is, we can use mathematical proof to show that the higher dimensions probably do exist, but experimental evidence for string theory is somewhat harder to come by.

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Friday, December 16, 2011 6:42 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I'd think that if you want to perceive something in another 'dimension' then you'd have to go there. Change your point of view or point of reference.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Friday, December 16, 2011 7:01 AM

BYTEMITE

Well, much like a two dimensional person might see another line as a point if it were arrayed perpendicular to their view, so too can we see aspects of the higher dimensions (maybe). So the best bet string theory has is to propose some particles we might find, and when we find them and the experiment can be replicated, that's an indication the theory might be on the right track.

Though I'm not really sure string theory has done much in the way of predicting, unfortunately.

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