Allojubrious said:Because light bends due to gravity, as can be seen in Gravitational Lensing, if gravity responds to mass and light is bent by gravity, does that not imply that the photon is NOT 100% massless?? That the photon indeed has a very tiny amount of mass?? Because if light bends due to gravity, then light must have a some mass right?? If one could explain this phenomenon, that would be great!
Thanks,
Al
A photon is a fundamental particle of light that carries energy and has no electric charge. It is the basic unit of all forms of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, radio waves, and X-rays.
No, a photon is not actually massless. While it has no rest mass, it does have energy and momentum, which means it has a relativistic mass. This mass is extremely small, but it is not zero.
A photon is considered to be massless because it has no rest mass and travels at the speed of light. In the theory of relativity, objects with mass cannot travel at the speed of light, so photons are considered to be massless particles.
The masslessness of a photon allows it to travel at the speed of light and have an infinite range. It also means that it is not affected by gravity, making it difficult to detect and study. Additionally, the lack of mass means that photons can pass through each other without interacting.
According to the law of conservation of energy, energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. Photons can be created through various processes, such as the emission of light from a light source or the conversion of energy into matter. They can also be destroyed through absorption or scattering, where their energy is transferred to another particle.