why do the units matter here? Under this theory, will a body at absolute zero have no observable mass? No attractive field around it, no inertia if you try to move it.
why do the units matter here? Under this theory, will a body at absolute zero have no observable mass? No attractive field around it, no inertia if you try to move it.
I'm only now seeing this a week later, but for E = mc^2, m is the rest mass.
rest mass = all the energies of the mass, not just its thermal energy. So, as it approaches 0 kelvin the thermal energy approaches 0 and the mass approaches its minimal possible energy (its kinetic energy approaches zero), but even at absolute zero, it still has the rest-mass of its fundamental particles (electrons, neutrons and protons) which have mass inherently. In practice, the scale of the mass of the particles massively outweighs the scale of the thermal mass, so while strictly true, it mostly doesn't matter.
So, because the scaling factor is stupid stupid large, changing temperature from anything to absolute zero does lower the mass, which does lower the gravity, but it just doesn't matter.