Testing the Influence of Temperature on Mass at High Temperatures

TL;DR

This study extends high-temperature mass measurements, confirming that temperature has an extremely small effect on mass, and refutes previous claims of larger anomalies at elevated temperatures.

Contribution

It provides new high-precision measurements of mass at high temperatures, significantly tightening limits on temperature-induced mass changes and disproving earlier reported anomalies.

Findings

No significant mass change detected at high temperatures.

Limits on mass variation are below 1.8 x 10^{-8}.

Previous claims of anomalies are ruled out by two orders of magnitude.

Abstract

Special relativity predicts a very small influence of temperature on mass of around ${\Delta}m/m{\approx}10^{-14}$. More than 100 years ago, experiments were performed that revealed a limit of $<10^{-8}$ for changes of a few degree at room temperature. A similar limit was obtained with a magnetic suspension balance at cryogenic temperatures. Recently, some measurements claim to have seen a negative dependence at the $10^{-6}$ level for a variety of metal samples at room temperature, which would be of interest e.g. to explain variations in the measurement of the gravitational constant. We have performed measurements with an analytical balance in vacuum and with a commercial thermogravimetric balance in argon and obtained a $3{\sigma}$ limit of $<1.8 \times 10^{-8}$ for both metallic (Cu, Pt) and non-metallic (Al2O3) samples ranging from room temperature to above $1000{\deg}C$. This extends previous measurements to the high-temperature regime and rules out all claimed anomalies by more than two orders of magnitude.