Massless Definition and 285 Threads

Suppose you have 3 balls, all of equal mass, M. They are connected to each other by equal-length (each length L) strings of negligible mass, such that one ball is suspended in the middle and the two balls at the end are themselves suspended from the ceiling at two points, a distance X from one...

I know physical bodies with mass cause gravitation. But do massless particles, like photons, also cause gravitation ? I know they're affected by gravity, but would a cloud of photons bend space by itself? Thank you

i am not a student i am 52 years old , and i am production engineering i like to solve some mechanics problems when i have time these problem i do not know how to solve thank you marcelo marcelo.stuhlberger@gmail.com

Homework Statement m1 and m2 are connected by a massless string wrapped around a massless pulley. An external force F is applied to the pulley. m1 does not equal m2 find the acceleration of each mass, the tension in the string, and the acceleration of the pulley. F external and m1 and...

In Peskin- Schroeder, pag 412: "In massless phi4 theory, the one-loop propagator correction is completely canceled by mass counterterm." So, do massless theory provides mass counterterm? How is it generated? Maybe from a bare mass...don't have any clue. I'm confused because it seems that...

My question is simple: Are there any massless My question is simple: [B]Are there any massless particles? Because I've now found out that the photon, which I always thought to be massless, actually has an extremely small amount of mass. It is something along the lines of a billionth of a...

Does massless charge exist!?? We do have numerous particles with zero electric charge and non-zero mass, but do we have particles with zero mass and non-zero electric charge?

Homework Statement Consider a non-abelian gauge theory of SU(N) × SU(N) gauge fields coupled to N^{2} complex scalars in the (N,N^{_}) multiplet of the gauge group. In N × N matrix notations, the vector fields form two independent traceless hermitian matrices Bμ(x) =\Sigma_{a}...

I got confused.. XD "Under Einstein's theory of relativity, an object accelerated close to the speed of light gains a tremendous amount of mass.That is why no amount of energy can suffice to accelerate any object, even an elementary particle, to the speed of light - it becomes infinitely...

Torque and Massless beam with Two Objects! Homework Statement http://capa.mcgill.ca/res/mcgill/dcmcgill/oldproblems/mcgilllib/Dik/graphics/torque.jpg A massless beam is supported only at one point, called the pivot point, as shown in the diagram. A block with mass m1 sits at the left end...

Homework Statement Two equal masses are glued to a massless hoop of radius R that is free to rotate about its center in a vertical plane. The angle between the masses is 2*theta. Find the frequency of small oscillations.Homework Equations \frac{d}{dt} \frac{∂L}{∂\dot{q}}=\frac{∂L}{∂q} The...

Homework Statement A mass m1 = 5.8 kg rests on a frictionless table and connected by a massless string to another mass m2 = 5.2 kg. A force of magnitude F = 30 N pulls m1 to the left a distance d = 0.87 m. 2)How much work is done by the normal force on m1 and m2? Homework Equations...

According to Einstein's equation E=moc2, any object which has mass has energy, and, conversely, anything which has energy must also have mass. Then, why are photons, bosons and gluons said to be massless?

Homework Statement One 2.0kg paint bucket is hanging by a massless cord from another 2.0 kg bucket, also hanging by a massless cord. a) If the buckets are at rest, what is the tension of each cord? b) If the two buckets are pulled upward with an acceleration of 1.30m/s2 by the upper cord...

do all mass less particles travel at the speed of light?

Title says it all. Also, do photons in a vacuum travel in a straight line? I find that kind of strange. Also, are gluons massless or practically massless? How are gluons detected?

Say, I want to couple the angular momenta of a electron spin angular momentum, and a photon's momentum. I guess in terms of representations it's: SU(2) \otimes [U(1) \oplus U(1)] = [SU(2) \otimes U(1)] \oplus [SU(2) \otimes U(1)] But I'm not at all certain if this is correct, one thing for...

Homework Statement On 20 degree incline, there are two blocks tied together with a rope, sliding down. the block on the top has mass of 2.0 kg (m1) and u_k1(coefficient of kinetic friction for block 1) = .30 the block on the bottom of the incline has mass of 3.0 kg (m2) and u_k2 = .20 What is...

Can a massless classical particle experience a nonzero Newton's second law force? Dickfore produced a very interesting formula in https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3333233&postcount=52 . Is this generally accepted? Are there other expressions that work? Or are all acceptable...

Homework Statement I must be overlooking something very simple: "A particle of mass M decays from rest into two particles. One particle has mass m and the other particle is massless. The momentum of the massless particle is..." Homework Equations energy² = mass² c^4 + p² c² momentum is...

What makes some strings have mass, and others none? (eg. graviton vs. electron)

Is it possible to have a massless charged particle in nature?

massless particle sends electron flying? Hi, I'm an 11 year old boy and I was listening to a lecture on my ipod by proffesor Steven Pollock, who I have been litening to for a while and I would be really surprised if he's giving me false information. More likely I just misunderstood him. But he...

Apparently before we apply the Higgs mechanism we have a set of massless bosons, the photon, the B, and the W1, W2 & W3 bosons. I'm reading that the photon and Z boson that we are familiar with can be expressed as a combination of a mixture of some of these massless states: \gamma =...

On "why massless particles move at the speed of light" It has come up a few times whether you can derive that massless particles must go the speed of light, strictly using SR. Bcrowell proposed a way that some argued against. I have a different tack for consideration. I recently derived...

In "Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content?," http://fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/E_mc2/www/ , Einstein invokes a result from his 1905 SR paper, which is that the Doppler shift of a light wave's frequency D(v)=\sqrt{(1-v)/(1+v)} is also the factor by which its energy changes...

It is well know that massless spin-1 gauge bosons have two spin states s³=+1 and s³=-1. There are two independent approaches how this can be shown: 1) via the representations of the Lorentz group for p²=0 2) via fixing / eliminating unphysical gauge d.o.f., e.g. via elimination of the...

I have taken down in my notes that for massless particles the formula by DeBrogle becomes E = pc, where p is momentum and c is the speed of light. But what I don't understand is how you can calculate momentum without mass? I thought momentum was mass times velocity? The specific example I...

1. A 2 kg block collides with a massless spring of spring constant 109 N/m attached to a wall. The speed of the block was observed to be 1.5 m/s at the moment of collision. The acceleration of gravity is 9.8 m/s2 How far does the spring compress if the sur- face on which the mass moves is...

Why do massless particles have only two degrees of freedom, i.e. the two helicity states. Why do massless spin-j particles do not have 2j+1 degrees of freedom like the massive particles? thanks

Anything that is massless must follow null geodesics. Why is this?

Homework Statement A pion at rest decays into a muon and an antineutrino. The mass of the antineutrino is zero, find the energies and momenta of the muon and antineutrino. Mass of the pion is 139.57 MeV/c^2 and the mass of the muon is 105.66 MeV/c^2 Homework Equations pion -> muon +...

Suppose we have a photon bouncing around in a massless mirrored box - does this system have inertial and/or gravitational mass? To be more realistic, if we have a massive black body cavity at some temperature above absolute zero, will the inertial and/or gravitational mass be equal to the mass...

I am reading about the electron flow in graphene and the article said this "This behavior is not described by the traditional mathematics (Schrodinger equation) but by the mass-less Dirac equation" What does this mean and what is the massless Dirac equation... the whole paragraph is...

Homework Statement A 4.50 kg weight hangs from a vertical massless ideal spring. When set in vertical motion, the weight obeys the equation y(t)=(8.50 cm)sin[(3.85 rad/s)t-1.40]. What is the maximum speed of the weight? What is the spring constant? Homework Equations Hooke's law: F = -kx...

Photons were trapped within the early stages of the expanding Universe. When the early universe expanded to a critical size (or cooled to a critcal temperature) photons escaped their dense enclosure. Today, these proto-photons must be still moving and located at the furthest limits of the...

What does it mean when a problem says "massless pulley?" I am just curios about what it means, does it mean that the pulley doesn't bear any friction that works against a whole pulley system?

massless Klein-Gordon equation not conformally invariant?? Wald discusses conformal transformations in appendix D. He shows that the source-free Maxwell's equations in four dimensions are conformally invariant, and this makes sense to me, since with photons all you can do is measure the...

Homework Statement In the following situation (see attachment) both pulleys and the string have zero mass. If m_{2} > m_{1} we would expect a net force and therefore an acceleration in the direction of the net force. But if pulley 2, which is moveable, has no mass the sum of the forces...

Homework Statement Homework Equations \SigmaF = ma \Sigma\tau=I\alpha ? The Attempt at a Solution m1 = 1 Kg m2 = 8 Kg \theta = 33 degrees mpulley = 7 Kg rpulley = .11 m \mu = 0.27 g = 9.8 m/s2 My attempt, I'm falling behind in class due to an illness and I can figure this...

Are there any reactions in that require the interaction of massless particles or am I right in thinking this is impossible? Thanks

BRS: Static Axisymmetric "Gravitationless" Massless Scalar Field Solutions This thread is an (easy and amusing) companion to a previous BRS, "The Weyl Vacuums" www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=378662 I. The Family of "Gravitationless" Solutions I will describe a family of...

Homework Statement A charged cork ball of mass 1g is suspended on a light string in the presence of a uniform electric field. When E = (3i + 5j) * 10^5 N/C, the ball is in equilibrium at \theta = 37 degrees. Find the charge on the ball and the tension on the string. ==================== |\...

Light has mass, and it travels at the Speed of light, so a massless object... I'm new to this entire field, and I know I'm probably wrong, and someone has already debunked this years ago, and if so, please either 1. correct me or 2.Add something. Since Photons have mass and when they comein...

What equipment one can use to detect interaction between two massless particles, such a photons? Is that even possible? If it is possible, I guess the only thing that one will be able to measure is the difference in energy between particles.

This is just a random inquiry that's confusing me. I remember hearing at one point that the reason no object could travel at the speed of light is that an object with mass going at the speed of light would require an infinite amount of energy to get moving that fast. And that photons could do it...

Homework Statement A frictionless, massless pulley is attached to the ceiling, in a gravity field of 9.81 m/s2. Mass M2 is greater than mass m1. The quantities T1, T2, T3 and g are magnitudes. The Attempt at a Solution The Options are Greater than, Less than, Equal To T1 is...

I don't much about it.. but according to Einstein's equation that E=MC squared which suggests that the mass is also a factor, therefore in theory that photon suppose not to have any energy but however... photon travels through the space without stoping..just like infinity.. does photon ever...

Why do photons, gluons, and all massless particles move at c? and will this fail if the Equivalence principle is disproved?

I was just reading a Wikipedia article about a hypothetical particle known as the graviton. It stated that it was massless -- but how is this possible? I thought that every particle has to have a mass.