‘Negative Mass’ Created at Washington State University

Re:‘Negative Mass’ Created at Washington State University by SubiculumCode on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @12:13AM (#14094695)

Thanks. Too bad it isn't real negative mass. How about imaginary number mass?

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Re:‘Negative Mass’ Created at Washington State University by nograpes on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @05:26AM (#14096068)

I thought you were joking, but I came across this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass#Tachyonic_particles_and_i...

and was surprised that a plausible notion of imaginary mass exists.

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Re:‘Negative Mass’ Created at Washington State University by godelski on Wednesday April 19, 2017 @03:52PM (#14151140)

Many times people will see an asymptote and say "Hey, what would happen if I crossed that? What would the math and physics look like?"

Tachyons are actually a great example of this. Taking the relativistic mass equation and asking "What would happen if I allowed for speeds larger than the speed of light?" Science is more a process of elimination. What does the math say? Can we observe what the math says should happen? Repeat.

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Re:‘Negative Mass’ Created at Washington State University by SubiculumCode on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @05:35PM (#14101989)

Well being a layman, I had no idea if I was joking or not. :)

Actually the idea of negative mass made me wonder if this would open the possibility for FTL space travel...Ran into a comment on the internets somewhere that said "no, because the mass is squared in the relation with energy, but the existence of imaginary masses might"

Thanks for the link.

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