rest mass variability

Try googling the title above or variations  of  it and you will come up with hits.The possibility that rest mass of particles can vary has been given some consideration ,particularly it seems in relation to gravitational theory.

Something that seems to have both been recognised yet strangely overlooked(or given scant consideration) is the strong possibility,based on well established experimental evidence that rest masses of particles in electrical fields,depends on the structure of the field in terms of the locations of the interacting particles.In short,particles such as electrons and protons have rest masses which are frame dependant.The rest mass of a particle depends on the structure of the rest frame and the location of the particles within it.

At this point a lot of physicists might dismiss the idea claiming that it is at odds with special relativity.Such dismissive claims are easily rejected.It is easy to show that the concept of a frame dependant rest mass is not at odds with relativity at all.In fact it is special relativity that provides the strongest evidence that rest mass is variable.The variability referred to here is incredibly small and in general hardly makes any difference to those problems solved by using relativity.Small though the variability is(perhaps better described as negligible in most applications)the variability can be measured and has been measured.

Does variability disprove special relativity?In short the answer is no.

More to come tomorrow