Does a photon accelerate to reach the speed of light?

[woz]

I have been wondering wether a photon has acceleration or not, how does it reach the 300,000 km/s? does a photon even need to accelerate?

I would also appreciate your telling me about rest mass, how does it work, what does it cause, etc.

WoZ

 

[ramollari]

The photon has no rest mass, so it doesn't need to accelerate.

 

[Crosson]

An acceleration is a change in velocity. Photons always move at the speed of light, as do all massless particles.

 

[ramollari]

There's one thing though. A photon does have momentum, so when an atom emits a photon it has to recoil slightly.

 

[Mk]

Well, what Woz is trying to ask is, how does it start moving in the first place... maybe.

It takes an infintesimal amount of energy to accelerate a luxon, a particle with no rest mass, such as a photon, but not zero. Once it gets accelerated to the exclusively luxonic speed of the speed of light in a vacuum, from that infintesimal amount of energy, it needs no more, it doesn't slow down or speed up, unless of course it goes through a medium.

 

[GENIERE]

...it doesn't slow down or speed up, unless of course it goes through a medium.

It may be absorbed or scattered but always propagates at C.

 

[ramollari]

The photon is propagating at c as soon as it is created. It is not that there is initially a photon 'at rest' that needs to be accelerated to c.

 

[ZapperZ]

Well, what Woz is trying to ask is, how does it start moving in the first place... maybe.

It takes an infintesimal amount of energy to accelerate a luxon, a particle with no rest mass, such as a photon, but not zero. Once it gets accelerated to the exclusively luxonic speed of the speed of light in a vacuum, from that infintesimal amount of energy, it needs no more, it doesn't slow down or speed up, unless of course it goes through a medium.

When was this "luxon" experimentally discovered or verified? Oh wait... it hasn't?

Then why are you using a hypothetical particle to contradict something that HAS been experimentally verified, and has an unbelievably accurate theory (QED)? That's like using a pseudoscience to disprove a science!

Take note of the statement already mentioned, that if a photon has to accelerate, it means that over some finite time, it IS NOT traveling at c in vacuum! This violates SR! We need to shake a few people up so that they somehow can get free from the classical Newtonian mechanics here...

Zz.