What does it mean to say that mass "approaches infinity"?
I have read that mass of a body increases with the speed and when the body reaches the speed of light, the mass becomes infinity.
What exactly does it mean to say that the mass "approaches infinity" or "becomes infinity"? I am not able to get a picture of "infinite mass" in my mind.
Answer
The answers given so far are fine, but to my surprise nobody's mentioned the most important point: in modern terminology, we generally don't say that the mass of an object increases with speed. "Relativistic mass increase" is outdated terminology, not used by most physicists anymore. In general, nowadays, "mass" means "rest mass" and is independent of velocity. Igor Ivanov's answer to this question says it all.
I haven't read the article by Lev Okun that he refers to, but I like the term "pedagogical virus" for this notion.
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