Photons Do Not Have A Mass

Discussion in 'The Cesspool' started by Reiku, Dec 2, 2007.

  1. Klippymitch Thinker Registered Senior Member

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    Einstein said this about photons.They are both a particle and a wave.

    So maybe a photon is also a mass and massless.
     
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  3. Klippymitch Thinker Registered Senior Member

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    How can you make something go faster than itself? That's stupid and impossible.
     
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  5. Reiku Banned Banned

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    1. To accelerate a photon, is to tunnel it through spacetime twist: A Pathology.

    2. The Inflationay Phase is when all energy was extrapolated faster then the speed of the energy is consisted of... in other words, photons are converted through E=Mc2 into M=E/c2.

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  7. Reiku Banned Banned

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    But energy was the first quanta... ever to exist in the universe, so mass COULD NOT come first.

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  8. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    That part doesn't make a lot of sense the way you said it and you could probably reword it to sound better.

    Really, we can all relax about this. I've seen some nonsense in science from so-called professionals too, enough to support a few writing careers. But please relax, Reiku. You don't have to make sense or convince people every time. Look at what people say and if you can gain any intelligence from it, use that.
     
  9. Reiku Banned Banned

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    In that case, i implore that James, or a supermod puts this back into the physics dep. because so far, nothing ''cesspooly'' is really consistant. Do you agree>?
     
  10. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    I think that the cesspool was used wrongly in this case. Not everyone who posts something is going to be right all the time. Hostile, rude responses ruin the credibility of the response at the very least. When we have civility we have civilization.
     
  11. mercaptan Das Feuer liebt mich Registered Senior Member

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    Ahhh why yes indeed.

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  12. Reiku Banned Banned

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    Agreed.
     
  13. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    What exactly does anyone mean when they say that the mass of a photon is entirely relativistic mass? I have a notion what that means but I can use the input.
     
  14. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Simply that a photon is never at rest. Therefore, it's mass is relativistic only.
     
  15. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    Sounds simple enough.

    Why does that make a difference?
     
    Last edited: Dec 14, 2007
  16. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Reiku:

    This is meaningless rubbish.


    MetaKron:

    There are two contributions to relativistic mass, which is why it is a concept that most physicists don't like to use these days due to the confusion it causes.

    Part of relativistic mass is the rest mass of an object (if it has any). That is a fixed, intrinsic property of the object.

    The other part of relativistic mass is the mass equivalent of the object's kinetic energy (i.e. the energy it has due to its speed). This is not a fixed value, because the object's speed might change. Worse than that, it is also reference frame dependent, in that two observers moving relative to one another will NOT agree on the kinetic energy of an object (although they WILL agree on its rest mass).
     
  17. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    Some people wouldn't recognize Einstein's work on this and would dismiss it as the work of a crackpot.

    I have had a weird time with this. The one time that I found Einstein's field equations on the net they were, no kidding, in JPEG format and too blurry to read.

    So you say that relativistic mass is the mass equivalent of the object's kinetic energy. That makes the mass of a photon relativistic mass for certain. We're on the same page with that.
     
  18. Frud11 Banned Banned

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    The photon has no mass vector (just two EM vectors that rotate orthogonally), it's like 'pure' energy. Heat is infrared radiation, and what that radiation does to molecules (makes them vibrate).
    Radiation (photons) is equivalent to mass. As Uncle Al showed, with the photoelectric effect.
     
  19. Frud11 Banned Banned

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    "We're so sorry, Uncle Albert
    we're so sorry, that we haven't done a thing, all day..."
     
  20. Reiku Banned Banned

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  21. K.FLINT Devil's advocate :D Registered Senior Member

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    Suprise! Reiku had things right.

    Hey Reiku, what's up? I have not been on here for a long time, life is keeping me busy. I went to 'Ask an Astrophysicist' at the NASA website and here was the response on the subject of photons being effected by light, seems you have a case.

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    K.Flint, wrote:
    > Topic:
    > can temperature or energy fluctuations of an atom affect absorption of photons?
    >

    Thanks for the question.

    Yes, these things can have an effect on the absorption of photons by an atom. They can affect the position of electrons around the nucleus
    of an atom and, thus, if and how a photon is absorbed.

    Amy C. Fredericks
    for Ask an Astrophysicist
    "Amy C. Fredericks" <fredericks.amy@usno.navy.mil>
     

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