Can a body travelling at a speed of light can change its mass??

Question

is it possible that when a body is travelling at the speed of light, its mass or bosy size/shape changes??

i read somewhere that if an ant is travelling that fast, then its body mass can grow as great as that of an elephant and vice-versa

Answer 1

According to principle of relativity, yes there is a change in shape/size and mass of a body when it is moving. In fact there is a contraction in length of the body along the direction of motion and an increase in its mass. But these changes are significant only if the moving body has speed close to the speed of light(not exactly with speed of light). For bodies which can move exactly with speed of light, there is no change in shape/size but mass will go up to infinity (theoretically).

Now  can give you a formula to understand the effect of speed on mass:

m2 = m1 / sqrt (1 - v^2/c^2)

where m2 is mass in motion , m1 is mass at rest , v is speed of object and c is speed of light.

If you calculate for an electron moving with speed 0.99c you will get its mass 7 times its mass at rest.

Similar formula exist for length of moving body.

Hope you got your answer.

Cheers..

Answer 2

A body travelling at the speed of light can't have mass. If it did, the mass would be infinitely large.

If you're accelerating close to the speed of light, then your mass will become greater and greater.

Answer 3

Anythig travelling at the speed of light would stretch into time.

Example

If you could fly at the speed of light you legs would stay put but your body would stretch into the future your whole body would stretch but will be frozen still. No matter how far someone travels they'll never go further than your feet as you are in the future. Its impossible for mass to do this of course as light is only one wave which is being stretch in the length of time

Answer 4

I think...yes