Rest mass

The invariant mass, rest mass,intrinsic mass, proper mass, or in the case of bound systems simply mass, is a characteristic of the total energy and momentum of an object or a system of objects that is the same in all frames of reference related by Lorentz transformations. If a center of momentum frame exists for the system, then the invariant mass of a system is simply the total energy divided by the speed of light squared. In other reference frames, the energy of the system increases, but system momentum is subtracted from this, so that the invariant mass remains unchanged.

Systems whose four-momentum is a null vector (for example a single photon or many photons moving in exactly the same direction) have zero invariant mass, and are referred to as massless. A physical object or particle moving faster than the speed of light would have space-like four-momenta (such as the hypothesized tachyon), and these do not appear to exist. Any time-like four-momentum possesses a reference frame where the momentum (3-dimensional) is zero, which is a center of momentum frame. In this case, invariant mass is positive and is referred to as the rest mass.

If objects within a system are in relative motion, then the invariant mass of the whole system will differ from the sum of the objects' rest masses. This is also equal to the total energy of the system divided by c². See mass–energy equivalence for a discussion of definitions of mass. Since the mass of systems must be measured with a weight or mass scale in a center of momentum frame in which the entire system has zero momentum, such a scale always measures the system's invariant mass. For example, a scale would measure the kinetic energy of the molecules in a bottle of gas to be part of invariant mass of the bottle, and thus also its rest mass. The same is true for massless particles in such system, which add invariant mass and also rest mass to systems, according to their energy.

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