TITLE:
Hydrodynamic Analogy to Special Relativity
AUTHORS:
Xue-Nong Chen
KEYWORDS:
Hydrodynamic Mass, Water Waves, Special Relativity, Velocity Dependence of Mass, Mass-Energy Equivalence
JOURNAL NAME:
World Journal of Mechanics,
Vol.6 No.10,
October
25,
2016
ABSTRACT: By studying of a slender body moving in a fluid wave-medium, e.g., in air or in shallow water, it was found that the hydrodynamic momentum mass and the total energy of the fluid field can be expressed in forms of and E=mc2, where v is the body moving speed, c is the wave speed and is the hydrodynamic mass at the zero speed. Thus a hydrodynamic analogy to the relativistic particle motion in vacuum can be traced. The velocity dependence of mass and the mass-energy equivalence are universal for any wave medium, which should not be regarded as a consequence of relative Lorentz time-space, but one of the existence of wave in the medium. Its further inference leads to an even more significant physical picture. If the mass particle moves in an unbounded space at a supercritical speed, i.e. , waves are generated and radiated from it, like the Mach waves by the supersonic plane, and the particle itself experiences a resistance as reaction from the wave radiation. By an extension of this analogy, it can be interred from a hydrodynamic superconductive phenomenon that particles or waves can move possibly at a superluminal speed without experiencing any resistance through a tunnel (a bounded space) under certain conditions. Therefore the speed of light is not the limit of our physical world and superluminal phenomena are possible.