Light Has Mass?

Discussion in 'Science and Nature' started by The_Chef, Jun 19, 2013.

  1. So I was thinking, anything affected by gravity has weight and to have weight you need mass. So black holes have such great gravity that light cannot escape making them invisible. So if gravity can bend light, does light have mass? And if so, it must also have weight.
     
  2.  
    :) we are fed a lot of BS regarding these kind of what ifs?  Heres a classic eg :
    \tInformation loss paradoxMain article: Black hole information paradox
     
    \t\tList of unsolved problems in physics\t\t\t\t\tIs physical information lost in black holes?\t\t 
    Because a black hole has only a few internal parameters, most of the information about the matter that went into forming the black hole is lost. Regardless of the type of matter which goes into a black hole, it appears that only information concerning the total mass, charge, and angular momentum are conserved. As long as black holes were thought to persist forever this information loss is not that problematic, as the information can be thought of as existing inside the black hole, inaccessible from the outside. However, black holes slowly evaporate by emitting Hawking radiation. This radiation does not appear to carry any additional information about the matter that formed the black hole, meaning that this information appears to be gone forever.<sup>[122]</sup>
    The question whether information is truly lost in black holes (the black hole information paradox) has divided the theoretical physics community (see Thorne–Hawking–Preskill bet). In quantum mechanics, loss of information corresponds to the violation of vital property called unitarity, which has to do with the conservation of probability. It has been argued that loss of unitarity would also imply violation of conservation of energy.<sup>[123]</sup> Over recent years evidence has been building that indeed information and unitarity are preserved in a full ntum gravitational treatment of the problem.<sup>[124]</sup>
     
     
     
    Yeh right :) prove it.
     
  3. I'd have to visit a black hole to find out. The only bad news is, I would not return with the results :(
     
  4. :) we are fed a lot of BS regarding these kind of what ifs? Heres a classic eg :

    \tInformation loss paradox
    Main article: Black hole information paradox


    \t\tList of unsolved problems in physics
    \t
    \t\t\t\tIs physical information lost in black holes?
    \t\t
    Because a black hole has only a few internal parameters, most of the information about the matter that went into forming the black hole is lost. Regardless of the type of matter which goes into a black hole, it appears that only information concerning the total mass, charge, and angular momentum are conserved. As long as black holes were thought to persist forever this information loss is not that problematic, as the information can be thought of as existing inside the black hole, inaccessible from the outside. However, black holes slowly evaporate by emitting Hawking radiation. This radiation does not appear to carry any additional information about the matter that formed the black hole, meaning that this information appears to be gone forever.[122]
    The question whether information is truly lost in black holes (the black hole information paradox) has divided the theoretical physics community (see Thorne–Hawking–Preskill bet). In quantum mechanics, loss of information corresponds to the violation of vital property called unitarity, which has to do with the conservation of probability. It has been argued that loss of unitarity would also imply violation of conservation of energy.[123] Over recent years evidence has been building that indeed information and unitarity are preserved in a full ntum gravitational treatment of the problem.[124]



    Yeh right :) prove it.
    </blockquote>
    Um... Yeah what he said!
     
  5.  
    Usually our inability to accept somethings science says is because of our lack of knowledge in that area or lack of advanced thinking skills. 
     
    The other thing that causes people to reject many things is the word "Theory". Everyday use a theory means something totally different. In Science a Law is Absolute, and a Theory is just one notch below it. For the most part that Theory is very well accepted like the Theory of Electricity. That is a radically different meaning then what would generally be assumed. 
     
    To answer that question or add to the commentary light is effected by Gravity because this current argument lacks some important additional information....Gravity Bends Time Space. That bending is so severe that it allows light to be captured by a Black Hole. 
     
    Light travels in a straight line under normal conditions but once it encounters a disturbance in space time it follows what appears to be a straight line but its not all of space time is curving so it follows that curve. There are two perspectives at work. If you were in the Black Hole or being sucked in since Space Time was being warped all around you you would think it was going in a straight line, but if you were a outsider outside that distortion then it would appear that it was not. 
     
    Whats interesting is your very question almost exactly was how Einstein proved he was right about this issue. Before that for years they thought he was a quack. We only see the post proven Einstein and not the one before that. 
     
    On May 19, 1919 the proof the world needed was demonstrated and humanity made a quantum leap in general understanding. The most important Eclipse the world has ever known took place. To make a long story short Einstein stated the star cluster Hyades that visible behind the Sun would appear on the edge of the eclipse even though it was behind the sun. Astronomers and everyone said he was a loon. The Royal Astronomical Society which was the worlds premier at the time assembled a group to witness what he was saying was about to happen. 
     
    As the eclipse happened they photographed that exact star on the edge of the Suns disc only capturable because the eclipse had drowned out most of the light. 
     
    What they saw changed the world and the head of England's Royal Astronomical Society commented then that Einstein just changed the world. 
     
    The star never moved it was behind the sun.....gravity from the sun not only attracts things with mass but creates a massive space time  disruption. Space and Time are interlinked and where as that light never was moved it was traveling in a straight line directly at the sun the space time curving wrapped that light around the sun. Humans were able to witness this and take a photograph. That day changed everything. 
     
    Einsteins theories still govern us today and in ways you do not even see. Your very life exists in ways because of it. Take GPS for instance. Its used in everything from trains, planes, cars etc. There is a time dilation effect that occurs as you travel faster. The GPS sats in orbit travel over 14,000 miles per hour in orbit and there in orbit at over 20,000 km. The time in those satellites actually is very off. Time is happening faster for them in orbit then down on the planet where you are moving slower. To create achieve a accuracy of 15 meters you cant lose more then 50 nanoseconds a day. The GPS system looses about 40 micro not nano seconds a day in accuracy. Some other variables add to it and you lose almost 10km of accuracy a day. 
     
    So how is it so accurate...they plug in the math that Einstein's genius gave us and the base stations, your phones, your car all autocorrect the inaccuracy due to time dilation.
    GPS navigation in its current form would of never worked if it was not for light not having mass, and light being affected by gravity which sounds impossible because light has no mass but gravity not only attracts mass it also curves space and time and hence it effects light. Unlike many things this all has been verified, still is verified, and happens regardless if you understand it or not. The breakthrough that that man had literally has made our modern day possible. From his ideas many other things, devices, products all were conceived from it. 
     
  6. Gravity in general relativity is curved spacetime. Light is always going to move in a straight line, but in a curved space, there are no straight lines. So it takes the straightest possible path in that curved space.
     
    For instance, if you draw two points on the surface of a sphere and connected them with a straight line, then to you the line would seem like it's completely straight line. But it's actually a curved line because the surface of the sphere is a curved surface, you've just drawn the straightest possible line. That's pretty much what's happening with light when it goes beyond an event horizon of a black hole. The straightest possible line is a line leading into the back hole.
     
    Read this for a better explanation of what I'm talking about, it's kind of difficult to explain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesic
     
     
  7.  
     
    Are you serious?
     
    :)
     
  8.  
     
    For all intents and purposes...yes. Unless theres been a change which is noticed universally on whatever that is then for the most part it is.
     
    Theres no truth's only a sum of facts that end up making something indisputable. A scientific law is observations peer verified over and over that applies under the same conditions. 
     
     
    The speed of light is absolute its 186,000 miles per second in a vacuum.  Thats here there across the galaxy anywhere you go. 

     
  9. You're clearly not a physicist, this is not an offense nor an accusation but you should study a bit more before making such erroneous assumptions.
     
  10. #11 JuanRing, Jul 5, 2013
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 5, 2013
     
    Well i mean it's unlikely that any of us on this forum could be legitimately classified as physicists... that takes years of study in advanced mathematical and scientific fields.
     
    However, you seem to be alluding that the speed of light is... erroneous? I'm really not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean that it is not 186,000 miles/second? Because many very accredited physicists agree that it is.
     
    The answer to the question regarding light being trapped in a black hole definitely refers to the curvature of space time, which is also responsible for other effects in relativistic physics, such as time dilation. Black holes are points of near infinite mass(or rather masses so large that they are nearly unquantifiable), where the gravitational force of the mass overcomes the outward energy put forth by the Uncertaintly Principle. It's generally understood that the known laws of physics(mostly based on Newton's calculations) break down near black holes.
     
    Maybe your referring to the wave/particle duality of light, which gives it a certain ambiguity. If it's a particle, it could theoretically have mass, although that mass would be negligible. And if it is a wave, it would have no mass, like sound, or radiation.
     
    Really I'm not sure what your referring to, so I can't really address it.
     
  11. The speed of light is a mathematical approximation. The same can be said about anything ivolving mathematics. We're not even certain that the Laws of Physics are constant throughout the universe.
     
    I'm not discarding what you said, I was just pointing out that there are no absolutes in science, only approximations that are close enough to reality, close enough for us to develop working models. A "Law" in science can be considered as "true", but we have no way to know if this applies throughout the entire universe nor if it will apply everywhere at every moment in time. It's simply the best understanding we have now as it has not yet been disproven. We've come a long way since our world view was based on absolutes. Did you limit yourself to the study of Newtonian Physics.
     
    A lot of people on Grasscity have a higher education, no pun intended.
     
  12. Hard to say, i suppose it depends on the definition of mass and light you use. As far into the quantum realm we delve the smaller and smaller particles we discover. If light does not consist of any 'mass' (by this i mean particles of some sort at some scale) then light is nothing. It seems to me it must have mass or have an infinite velocity (which it does not). From my understanding spin/rotation creates what we call mass, so if a particles spin is removed it no longer has mass and no longer interacts with mass. It could be said that it has ceased to exist but the conservation of information would dictate that the mass as an entity has been reduced to the quantum vacuum, which would seemingly be lost to us, but still exists. Light is also described as a wave and i dont know of anything without mass that produces waves. If it has no mass/spin it would not interact with its surrounding and would not produce a wave. My conclusion is then, that light has mass.5
     
  13. Hard to say, i suppose it depends on the definition of mass and light you use. As far into the quantum realm we delve the smaller and smaller particles we discover. If light does not consist of any 'mass' (by this i mean particles of some sort at some scale) then light is nothing. It seems to me it must have mass or have an infinite velocity (which it does not). From my understanding spin/rotation creates what we call mass, so if a particles spin is removed it no longer has mass and no longer interacts with mass. It could be said that it has ceased to exist but the conservation of information would dictate that the mass as an entity has been reduced to the quantum vacuum, which would seemingly be lost to us, but still exists. Light is also described as a wave and i dont know of anything without mass that produces waves. If it has no mass/spin it would not interact with its surrounding and would not produce a wave. My conclusion is then, that light has mass.5
     
  14. Mass and light are both energy, just in different forms. Just like water vapour and ice are both essentially the same thing.
    Light is no mass and has no mass, just like water vapour is no ice and has no ice. Both are different forms of the same stuff.
     
    Light only knows straight lines, but gravity bends spacetime in which the light is travelling. Because the light always travels in a straight line, it appears to bend as soon as the space in which it's moving is bend by the gravity.
     
  15. In regards to the claim that the speed of light is constant, well thats just nonsense. The accumulated measurements of the speed of light of the past few hundred years shows anything but a constant speed.
     

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