ChatterBank0 min ago
has light got mass?
has light got mass?
jim
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.No is a yes sort of way! Very complex area of physics. Try this link for an explanation.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/ligh t_mass.html
ok so having read a bit on the web i'll have a stab at it: when one says "mass tends towards infinty as an object accelerates towards to the speed of light" one should say "relativistic mass tends towards infinity as an object accelerates towards the speed of light" which actually means "energy tends towards infinity as an object accelerates towards the speed of light"
if this is right does that mean that light has infinite energy?
jim
jim
Dela says: Interesting if light has no mass then it would be imposible to convert it to electricity.
Actually no. If light HAD mass, it would be practically impossible to convert it to electricity - energy may be converted between types fairly easily, but destroying mass to create energy, whilst theoretically very profitable ( e = mc^2 meaning destroying an atom could power my PC for a day ) is extremely difficult
Light has no mass which is why it travels at the speed of... light. In fact any particle with zero mass must travel at the speed of light (and there are some other than photons of light itself - gravitons and gluons for instance, and perhaps also neutrinos).
Light is not bent by gravity but space is. Light following a "straight" path through bent space appears bent itself.
ok, heres another go....
if you slowed a photon down to a standstill, then weighed it, it would have no mass. this is why it doeasnt have infinite energy, because the rest mass is zero. However it does, when moving, have energy equal to a constant (planck) times its frequency. This energy is effectively its travelling mass, though the mass of each photon is small.
light is trapped in black holes by the curvature of space, not by attraction.