Mass not a limiting factor

There seems to be a lot of discussion about the speed of light and the mass effect on reaching that speed. In modeling the electron and it's location about a nucleus, it is said that the electron travels at the speed of light. In molecular electronic transitions from one energy level to another the electron jumps.. well at least the speed of this transition can or has not been measured. Now physicists have been able to measure the mass of an electron.
Only the wave theory of the electron can be used if mass limits travelling at the speed of light. A wave has no mass and therefore requires no energy to travel at light speed. Or perhaps, we can't measure the mass or locate the particles that make up a wave. A photon has been measured imparting energy on a surface which indicates a transfer of energy. Defaulting to the enegry equation, mass must be present for the photon to have energy to transfer.
We can measure an energy of a wave so the E=mc2 must have all variables of the equation present or there would be no energy. Does the energy equation go haywire when there is no mass? If an electron has mass, how can it travel at the speed of light? If an electron does travel at the speed of light and has mass there seems to be hope that man can travel at that speed because we know of a massive object (electron) that can go that fast.

[deamonstar]

[deamonstar]

to say "the speed of light" is somewhat of a misleading statement. when most people think of the speed of light, they typically mean the speed of light in a vacuum. however, the speed of light routinly decellerates when passing through matter (and an atom being matter will slow the speed of light).
also, the less mass that is present in a body of matter (in this case it is an extremely small amount of mass, namely an electron), the easier it is to accelerate, espescially over small distances such as that found within the span of an atom.
it's all realative...

[deamonstar]

another thing to think about...

"As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass doesn't actually increase.

What does increase is the object's "relativistic mass". The concept of "relativistic mass" was invented so that the motion of particles traveling at close to the speed of light could be calculated using Newtonian formulas (ie: F = ma). In other words, F = ma doesn't work so well for objects travelling very fast. However, if you increase the value of "m", it will work again. That increased value of "m" is called an object's "relativistic mass".

But the key is that whatever object you managed to get moving at close to the speed of light will not feel the effects of having more mass because, in reality, it simply doesn't have any more mass than it did when it was standing still.

Another interesting note about "relativistic mass" is that it allows Einstein's famous E=mc^2 equastion to work for moving objects. That formula, using the true mass of an object, only works for the "rest frame" of that object."

a quote by someone else from www.space-talk.com

[Roberto]

Electrons, being massive (i.e., that have mass) particles, do not travel at the speed of light and this is taken into account in quantum electrodynamics(QED), the only relativistic quantum theory for electromagnetism that seems to work at the moment (even then in a limited way).

The quantum theory does not say that the electron is a wave. The non-relativistic version states that it is something that have some wave properties and some particle properties depending on the experiment you do with it. In QED, there are fields for every particle in the theory (electrons, photons and quarks) and these fields create and destroy these particles by some rules. The picture in this theory is much more complicated and, I risk to say, less understood.

About the equation E=mc2, it only works for a particle at rest. If the particle is moving, the equation is
E2=m2c4+p2c2, where p is the momentum of the particle. If a particle has no mass, it travels always at the speed of the light and has momentum p=E/c

[wholloway]

Question?
If I have a rigid shaft that's one light year long, and I can move it by pushing it, what will keep me from signaling some one on the other end, faster than the speed of light. Ignoring momentum and how strong I would have to be, whats to keep this simple signal from working?

[Roberto]

Relativity theory have very far reaching consequences, one of them is the non-existence of perfect rigid bodies.

The limit in the velocity in relativity theory is closely related to causality principle (a cause always come before ITS consequence). Causality is a VERY experimental principle and velocities of transmission of information higher than the speed of light could break up causality.

Indeed, bodies are made up of atoms. When you push a bar of some material the atoms push one another in sequence. For little bodies you would not note this, but for a large body, the deformation becomes a compression-expansion wave that propagates at approximately the speed of sound of the material. So, you would not communicate instantaneously, but instead of it, this would be a very slow transmission.

[TINNY]

read this

[Tim_Lou]

[Tim_Lou]

well, if god really exist, all science would be meaningless....
it would be ironic that the truth has been here for thousands of years but only a few part of us believe in it.

i believe in god while i believe in science.... but both extremes are against each other.
with the unification of both extremes, we might be able to find the truth of everything.
and the dream of Albert Einstein can be completed...
(probably he knows the existence of god already if god really exist...since he is in heaven.)

just some of my feelings...