Mass in special relativity what causes these particles to be termed "massless." However, even massless particles have a relativistic mass, which varies with their observed energy in various frames of reference, The invariant mass is the ratio of four-momentum (the four-dimensional generalization of classical momentum) to four-velocity: and is also the ratio of four-acceleration to four-force when the rest mass is constant. The four-dimensional form of Newton's second law is: The relativistic expressions for "E" and "p" obey the relativistic energy–momentum relation: where the m is the rest mass, or the invariant mass for systems, and "E" is the total energy. The equation is
Velocity-addition formula appear there must be inverted here: This matrix rotates the a pure time-axis vector to , and all its columns are relativistically orthogonal to one another, so it defines a Lorentz transformation. If a fly is moving with four-velocity in the ship frame, and it is boosted by multiplying by the matrix above, the new four-velocity in the shore frame is , Dividing by the time component and substituting for the components of the four-vectors and in terms of the components of the three-vectors and gives the relativistic composition law as The form of the relativistic composition law can be