Conflicting observations of observers(c)
     A body's high velocity through the medium causes still more strange phenomena. For example, early in the 20th Century it was observed that a body's mass increased as its speed approached that of light. In an early linear accelerator as diagramed below, electrons were found to have increasing resistance to acceleration as their speeds approached that of light. As their speeds increased, they became more massive.

     Similarly, aboard ship A it would be observed that B's mass is 25 percent greater than A's mass. As you might expect, observers(c) aboard B would observe that A is 25 percent more massive than B. How is this possible? It is not possible that ship B is both more massive and less massive than ship A, or that B is both shorter and longer than A, or that clocks on B are running both faster and slower than clocks on A, and no observer will observe such phenomena. Shortly we will see that it is possible that the distance, time, and mass standards on B are different from those on A, and that this contributes to the conflicting observations.

     Due to the inability of observers(c) moving relative to one another to agree on lengths, times, and masses, relativity theory leads to the conclusion that there are no absolute lengths or times or masses in nature and that space and time must be combined into spacetime to make sense of nature.

     An important consequence of the quantum medium is that absolute units of distance, time, and mass do exist in nature, and the observers aboard A and B (and Earth) who understand the medium's consequences can all agree on the absolute units. They can all agree that ship B's length, clock rate, and mass changed as a result of the change in B's absolute velocity, and that ship A did not change. They can all agree that B is shorter, more massive, and evolving slower than before because the absolute velocity of ship A is low, as we will see shortly.