Dear Colleagues,
I hope you would agree that the present status of relativistic mass in spacetime physics should not be silently tolerated.
On the one hand, the physics community is divided – some firmly reject the concept of relativistic mass (e.g., in papers entitled “The Virus of Relativistic Mass in the Year of Physics”), whereas others continue to regard it as an integral part of spacetime physics including in books published last year.
On the other hand, both mass and relativistic mass appear to be equally supported by the experimental evidence – since mass is defined as the measure of the resistance a particle offers to its acceleration (which is the accepted definition based on the experimental evidence) and since it is also an experimental fact that a particle’s resistance to its acceleration increases indefinitely (in a given reference frame) as the particle’s velocity approaches the speed of light (in the same reference frame), it follows that the particle’s mass increases when its velocity increases. Therefore the concept of relativistic mass (like the concept of mass) reflects an experimental fact.
If you are interested in contributing to a volume on relativistic mass, please reply to this Call and also indicate if you would like to serve as an editor or co-editor of the volume.
To try to reach a common understanding of relativistic mass, it was suggested by colleagues to include a special session on relativistic mass in the program of the Sixth Spacetime Conference (see Call for Papers): http://www.minkowskiinstitute.org/conferences/2020/
Best regards,
Vesselin Petkov
Minkowski Institute
vpetkov[AT]minkowskiinstitute.org