Re: starship-design: FTL and Special Relativity

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

Ben Franchuk writes:
 > Found in a FAQ.

What FAQ?

 > ----------------------Cut-----------------------------------------------
 > There is sometimes confusion surrounding the subject of mass in
 > relativity. This is because there are two separate uses of the term.
 > Sometimes people
 > say "mass" when they mean "relativistic mass", mr but at other times
 > they say "mass" when they mean "invariant mass", m0. These two meanings
 > are
 > not the same. The invariant mass of a particle is independent of its
 > velocity v, whereas relativistic mass increases with velocity and tends
 > to infinity as
 > the velocity approaches the speed of light c.

It is preferable to use "mass" to refer to invariant mass, and not use
the term "relativistic mass" at all.  In most cases what people mean by
"relativistic mass" is already covered by the term "energy".

 > You must have both time increase and mass decrease proven or the
 > theory is wrong.  Energy to increase a object becomes infinity as the
 > mass becomes infinity.

I can't make much sense out of what you're saying here.