masswhich

Masswhich is a neologism that has appeared in speculative discussions and science fiction to denote a conceptual construct involving mass and a selection criterion. It is not an established physical quantity, and it has no standard definition in peer-reviewed physics. As a result, its meaning varies across sources, and credible usage outside fictional or thought-experiment contexts remains limited.

In hypothetical physics discussions, masswhich is often described as a criterion or function that selects among competing mass configurations. For example, in a multi-body system, a masswhich might weight configurations by how well they satisfy a given constraint such as conservation laws or stability criteria, effectively acting as a selector for a preferred mass distribution.

In a methodological or philosophical context, masswhich may be used to illuminate questions about how masses are inferred from observations, similar to how likelihoods or posterior weights are used to choose among hypotheses. However, unlike standard physical quantities, masswhich has no agreed-upon units or interpretation, and its mathematical form is not standardized.

Criticism centers on definitional vagueness and the risk of conflating a fictional or metaphorical idea with measurable physics. Proponents argue that a precise mathematical definition and explicit interpretation would be required for any practical or theoretical use, to prevent confusion and ensure consistency with established concepts of mass, inertia, and mass distribution.

Origin and usage of the term appear mainly in online forums and speculative fiction. It has not been adopted by mainstream physics or formal scientific literature, and readers should treat it as a hypothetical or experimental concept rather than an established term.