Does a photon have rest mass?
This is the most common question asked about photon and it is one that has puzzled physicists for a long time. The issue that has caused confusion is the fact that a photon does not interact with other objects or itself. If a photon passes through a wall, it will not cause the wall to vibrate or absorb it. In other words, photons do not have mass. This is what most physicists say. In order to explain why a photon should have no mass, some physicists have proposed the idea of
Does a photon have inertia?
inertia is the resistance of an object to a change in its state of motion. If an object has more mass, it will experience greater force when it is accelerated, and will tend to resist that acceleration. An example of inertia is a ball rolling down an incline – when it reaches the bottom of the slope, it will continue moving down unless a force acts on it to stop it. An object with more mass will have more inertia, meaning it will be harder to stop once it reaches
Does a photon have rest mass in quantum theory?
The photon is an elementary particle that is associated with the transfer of energy and momentum. It has a zero rest mass in the classical view of the world, but in quantum mechanics it has an energy that is given by the Planck constant. This has lead to the idea that the photon has a non-zero rest mass in the quantum world. However, the idea of a photon having rest mass is not easy to understand. In the everyday world, rest mass is an attributed property of matter. This
Does a photon have rest mass in general relativity?
No, in general relativity, the photon is not described by a point particle but by a wave. This wave is called a wave-particle. The wave is spread out through all of space and time, but when we observe it, it appears as a particle. This is a consequence of the equivalence principle: since all matter and energy are interchangeable, the particle nature of light is just an illusion.
Does a photon have an event horizon?
In the framework of general relativity, when matter is compact enough to create a gravitational field, it will collapse to a single point known as a singularity. The singularity is a region where the general relativistic description of the physical laws breaks down. These singularities are called event horizons.