"Cino" <c...@isp.com> wrote in message

news:ba42d$4766b4b0$d80807f7$4443@DIALUPUSA.NET...

"The Nature of Mass"

We have all been taught in our physics classes that mass is one of the
fundamental entities of our reality and that all of the effects occurring
in our Universe are dependent on interactions between masses. It behooves
us then to examine what we know of mass.

Which has been done to death. A complete discussion of mass is given in the
following articlehttp://arxiv.org/abs/0709.0687

About 40 years ago the writer came across the observation in a
Scientific American article that, in the equation E=M*C^2 there can only
be two independent variables.

Since c is a relativistic invariant then it follows that there is only one
independant variable, wherein the other is the dependant variable.

One of those variables, E, M, or C must be dependent upon the other two.

That is a misconception. One can write either E = mc^2 or m = E/c^2. In the
first case m is the independant variable and E is the dependant variable. In
the second case E is the independant variable and m is the dependant
variable.

Similarly, it is obvious that energy, E, is an independent variable since
energy involves only force and length, ....

It is the *units* which depend on force and distance. Energy is not defined
in terms of force and distance however. In fact energy is one of those
quantities in physics which remains undefined.

...we can also measure it under conditions that are independent of the
velocity of light and of mass. There remains only mass to be examined.

A conclusion arrived at through poor reasoning.

If one wished to determine the mass of an object, one could weigh it
(gravitational mass),

The term is "passive gravitational mass."

..shake it (inertial mass) or observe the amount of energy released if it
where annihilated.

That is still inertial mass. The mass you left out is "active gravitational
mass."

Weighing a mass provides a measurement of its mass but the observation is
made in terms of a reference mass (e.g.- the mass of the Earth) and, in
effect, we would then be defining the mass in terms of another mass. This
is hardly an acceptable solution since it leads to a dead end.

That is incorrect. When we measure mass it is measured in terms of a
standard unit of mass. All basic physical quantities are like this. For
example; There is a standard mass which is the kilogram which is defined by
a platinum-iridium cylinder, cast in England in 1889. All other masses are
defined as multiples of this standard kilogram.

Annihilating the mass is a legitimate solution

Useful when it is okay to destroy the mass to be measured and when it can do
no harm or interfer with the measurement itself.

[snip all the stuff that's been said and done to death]

An intellectual difficulty occurs when one considers the so-called
"massless" particles. They have this name because they have no "rest
mass". A reasonable man would consider such a terminology to be frivolous
because these particles exist only when traveling at the velocity of
light. They have no "rest mass" because they don't exist at rest.

That's why the term "proper mass" is used, to avoid this problem. Try using
it from now on. However, just because the proper mass is zero it can't be
assumed from this that the mass itself is zero. Any time a body/particle has
momentum it also has inertial mass, by definition.

A simple "thought experiment" as outlined in Part 4 of
http://einsteinhoax.com/gravity.htmeasily shows this.

Sorry but I don't read web pages whose authors are unable to listen to
criticism and learn from it, such as you.

(The writer has received a rather cryptic E-mail from someone who
apparently is associated with the physics establishment ...

Now you're sounding paranoid.

...to the effect that the photon imparts momentum because its energy is
equal to the product of its frequency and Plank's Constant and it is
traveling at the velocity of light. The sender denied vehemently that the
expression E=M*C^2 and the idea that even though the photon contains
energy and imparts a momentum equivalent to a mass of that energy
traveling at the velocity of light, means that the photon has mass.

So what. It only means that he's ignorant of the concept of relativistic
mass. That the relativistic mass of a photon is non-zero and finite can be
found in most SR/GR texts which employ the notion of relativistic mass. The
paper I cited above, i.e.http://arxiv.org/abs/0709.0687, gives a list of
such textbooks which have been published within the last 10 years.

[snipped the "yadda yadda"]

The source material for this posting may be found in
http://einsteinhoax.com/hoax.htm(1997);
http://einsteinhoax.com/gravity.htm(1987); and
http://einsteinhoax.com/relcor.htm(1997).

Note to the newcomers. These links provided above are to the website of a
well-known crackpot. You can read it and you'll notice the errors and
paranpoid comments but if you mention them to the websites owner your
remarks will go unacknowledged.

Please make any response via E-mail as Newsgroups are not monitored on
a regular basis.

Warning: Only e-mails which do not challange a word of the author's website
will recieve a response. The rest will either be ignored or the sender will
be flamed by the website's owner, i.e. a gentlemen known here as "Rhetic."

Objective responses will be treated with the same courtesy as they are
presented.

That is a demonstrated lie. Try disagreeing with him and you'll see what I
mean.

The material at the Website has been posted continuously for over 8
years. In that time THERE HAVE BEEN NO OBJECTIVE REBUTTALS OF ANY OF THE
MATERIAL PRESENTED.

This is also another clear lie. Rhetic only considers e-mails that agree
with him as objective. Those which disagree with him he deems as
non-objective.

Long story short - Don't waste your time reading Rhetic's garbage.

Pete