Quote:
Originally posted by progdirjim
[b]The answer to your question is YES, you hand Jim a 1 lb gold brick. 
If you had a scale on that plane going the speed of light, it will measure the gold bar "heavier". If you could somehow weigh that bar on a scale that was sitting on earth, it would weigh the bar exactly the same as it would on earth.
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Well, actually, that's reversed. In the moving reference frame, time and mass would appear as it normally would have. But if you could see the plane from a ground telescope pointed at the speeding plane, it would appear to be more massive. It would also appear shorter. And the telescope would reveal everyone moving in slow-motion.
The plane would have to be moving awful fast, though, for that to be of any significance.
Of course, our luggage never made it onto the plane, and it now weighs the same as it did, following the new relativistic rule: lost luggage gains no mass.
To make things even more complicated, the mass
really doesn't increase per se. (insert clip from Scanners here)
Here's the best link on the web I've found for this subject:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...y/SR/mass.html