[deleted]
Hi,
"Since ordinary classical masses (i.e. golf balls) are composed of particles they too will not approach infinite mass as they approach the speed of light."
What is the problem about this?
Clearly nothing can reach an infinite mass. But not because of your essay's considerations, but because the very concept of infinity is absurd. How would you accelerate a golf ball to the speed of light? There's no physical mechanism that allows this, even if you don't need infinite energy to accelerate it to the top of lightspeed. Charging to much energy onto the golf ball, you destroy it and it cannot reach lightspeed. Charging the appropriate portions of energy onto it, you need an infinite amount of time to do this! (and i guess also an infinite amount of enery).
So, Einsteins "if-then"-Gedankenexperiment only shows the breakdown of his own theory for things that are beyond our spacetime. Because consequences of physical laws that cannot be executed in spacetime, have no meaning for the same reality the laws were designed for. (surely they HAVE a certain meaning - but only regarding their own limitation!).