Does relativistic mass affect space time in the same way as rest mass? To my understanding, (as I am not an actual physicist, but simply a citizen scientist) relativistic mass is really the measure of an object's energy. It is not the same as rest mass, which is the definition of mass that a layperson would be familiar with (how much matter an object is composed of). However, does a change in relativistic mass amount to the same magnitude of gravitational variation as an equivalent change in rest mass?