Has relativistic mass gone out of fashion?

In summary, Oas' paper discusses an investigation done on 164 students regarding the concept of relativistic mass and how it can lead to misconceptions among first-time learners of relativity. The paper explains that the idea of an object's mass increasing as it approaches the speed of light, as seen by an outside observer, is not entirely accurate and instead, the concept of energy and kinetic energy should be used to explain the ultimate speed limit of the universe. It is also argued that the use of relativistic mass is unnecessary and can lead to paradoxes. The Minkowski metric and energy-momentum relation are mentioned as the factors that
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #37
There was a discussion in Physics Forums that showed that the concept of "relativistic mass" was of some theoretical interest in understanding how the group theory of the Poincare group relates to the group theory of the Galilei group in the nonrelativistic limit.

You actually need an 11th degree of freedom to define the Galilei
limit. The 11th parameter (in Galilei) is the "central charge"
associated with mass. To make Poincare' suitable for taking the limit
to Galilei (that is: to implement the correspondence principle with
respect to non-relativistic physics!), one needs to split the energy
generator E into two parameters -- kinetic energy H and "relativistic
mass" M. E does not have a Galilean limit. The mass shell condition (E/
c)^2 - P^2 = (mc)^2 (where P is the momentum and m the rest mass)
needs to be generalized to P^2 - 2MH + (1/c)^2 H^2 = constant. An
additional invariant emerges: M - (1/c)^2 H = constant.

So it's not 100% correct that nobody cares about relativistic mass anymore. Maybe 99%.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=174039
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top