Ghost photobombs

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oo

 

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He's a clever chap though, MR.

I have been convinced for a couple of years now that MR is doing just as Dave describes. The deep psychological need is to make scientists dance. For some obscure reason.

 

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I dunno about obscure.

He has been clear about his anti-science stance.

Sour grapes a very common theme (over multiple forums and uncountable members). Many people have enough smarts to come up with their own ideas, based on pop-science, but when they take themselves seriously enough to put their ideas out there, they find that they are not up to snuff. (It doesnèt take scientists to dismantle their ideas, often simply a fresh pair of eyes will see the flaws). They go away licking their wounds, and blame "Science" for being too dogmatic, or religious or whatever epithet works. This gets reinforced with each new failed idea.

It racks up a pretty good number of points on the Crank Index.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

 

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And, in one fell swoop, you've invalidated centuries of experimentation & research into the physical properties of light! [photons have both mass & density]

 

Light is still physical, it just isn't material. Just like gravity.

 

It's physical but it's not made of matter. Just like lot's of things. Being made of particles doesn't make you matter.

 

I'd say that if it can be measured it is physical. So light and gravity and time and space can all be measured, making them physical, but that doesn't make them matter. Mass and volume make up matter afaik.

 

Yes..I think so. But there are issues with measurement itself at the quantum level dealing with the Uncertainty Principle and wavefunction collapse. Are we treading the fine line between physical and non-physical here? Perhaps so..Are entities in superimposed states non-physical entities?

 

Perhaps..

 

Nonsense. Light is composed of photons. "A photon is an elementary particle, the quantum of the electromagnetic field including electromagnetic radiation such as light, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force (even when static via virtual photons)."

Only @ rest do photons not have mass, otherwise they have a minute mass. Only through having mass can things like light-sails work, & this has been demonstrated most recently by a number of experiments [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail#Planetary_Society_LightSail_Projects].

I don't care if you have & apply imagination, but don't play fast & loose with Physics.

 

Definitely lets not play fast & loose with physics:

No. It is nonsenscial to say "when at rest, photons are massless".
Photons are never at rest. Ever.

You can say they have no rest mass, but that's really more about not having any rest.

They have relativistic mass, which is equivalent to their energy. This relativistic mass is what affects light sails.

Note that rest mass is invariant - the same for all observers, regardless of reference frame; whereas relativistic mass is dependent on the velocity of the observer. And for that reason relativistic mass is not equatable with plain ol' "mass". Photons have zero mass.