Why aren't photons infinitely massive?

[Alex Franke]

For some strange reason, I was thinking about gravity again...

Photons travel pretty darn fast, so why aren't they infinitely massive? OK, so maybe it started off massless. But then how can a particle be massless -- especially one that's affected by gravity? Or is this whole gravitational lensing thing just on the wave side of light?

I think my understanding of this stuff has faded over the years. Maybe I need book recommendation, too...

[Mr__Bill]

Photons aren't infinitely massive because, well, their lite

[Uncle Cracker]

Maybe I need book recommendation, too...

Try the phone book... Look under Psychiatrists. Your thinking is so heavy, I got a headache just thinking about you thinking about this... And on a beer day,no less...

[cgallery]

Well, today's photons are made of lighter-weight materials in China. I have a couple that are nearly infinitely massive. They just don't build 'em like that anymore.

[sigma147]

Alex,

Photos have no mass in the sense that I believe you are thinking. They do, however, have energy and energy couples gravitationally in the general theory of relativity.

To clarify a little more, a photon has inertial mass (aka "relativistic mass" which is has due to the fact that a photon has momentum) It has active gravitational mass (due to the fact that light generates a gravitational field - that's part of the wave/particle nature of its being) and passive gravitational mass (due to the fact that light is deflected in a gravitational field - again through the coupling of energy and gravitation through general relativity).

For a calcultion which demonstrates that a box of photons weighs more than the same box with no photons in it see the paper "On the concept of mass in relativity" which is listed at http://www.geocities.com/physics_world/

Hope this helps your pondering...

Sigma1447

[Alex Franke]

Photons aren't infinitely massive because, well, their lite

Oh, that was bad... Really, really bad...

Look under Psychiatrists. Your thinking is so heavy, I got a headache just thinking about you thinking about this...

I know, I know. I'm working throught these issues. I just don't think you see the gravity of the matter, though.

Well, today's photons are made of lighter-weight materials in China. I have a couple that are nearly infinitely massive. They just don't build 'em like that anymore.

And this one made me LOL.

Photos have no mass in the sense that I believe you are thinking. They do, however, have energy and energy couples gravitationally in the general theory of relativity. . . .http://www.geocities.com/physics_world/. . . .Hope this helps your pondering...

Finally! Thanks, sigma147 -- I suspected that it wasn't just black and white. This makes a little more sense, but I need to do a little more reading to wrap my head around it. Thanks for the link, too. Looks like I have a lot of reading to do!

[ragswl4]

More wine, less chemical fumes and all things will become clear.

[JSUPreston]

Well, today's photons are made of lighter-weight materials in China. I have a couple that are nearly infinitely massive. They just don't build 'em like that anymore.

I thought everything coming from China had lead paint on it, and lead is heavy!

[guycox]

For some strange reason, I was thinking about gravity again...

Photons travel pretty darn fast, so why aren't they infinitely massive? OK, so maybe it started off massless. But then how can a particle be massless -- especially one that's affected by gravity? Or is this whole gravitational lensing thing just on the wave side of light?

I think my understanding of this stuff has faded over the years. Maybe I need book recommendation, too...

Actually what you think is gravity is actually the earth doubling in size every 19.2 minutes... The expaning surface of the earth accelerates towards our feet at 9.8 meters/sec^2 creating the illusiion that such a thing as gravity actually exists. Since we and everything else on the earth is also doubling in size, we have no frame of reference for making valid measurements... on the galaxtic scale, the universe is expanding and enlarging thus explaining the red shift and the inaccuacies in calculating the mass of the "dark matter".

[scorrpio]

In regular, Euclidian geometry, parallel lines never intersect. But in non-Euclidian geometry (like on surface of a sphere), lines exhibiting parallelism in one point may intersect on other.

With photons and such, you essentially have 'non-Euclidian physics'. Things work differently.