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To: MNJohnnie

Do photons have mass?


27 posted on 08/16/2007 10:22:16 AM PDT by wolfinator
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To: wolfinator
Do photons have mass?

I didn't even know they were Catholic!

47 posted on 08/16/2007 10:28:27 AM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (Fred Dalton Thompson - POTUS 44)
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To: wolfinator

Not measurable mass. Therefore it doesn’t seem that special relativity is violated. Like another poster has stated, quantum mechanics states that it is possible that the photon was observed in both prisms simultaneously.

Or maybe one of their clocks was off by a millisecond or so.

The real test for this will be reproducibility.


49 posted on 08/16/2007 10:28:32 AM PDT by AntiKev ("No damage. The world's still turning isn't it?" - Stereo Goes Stellar - Blow Me A Holloway)
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To: wolfinator
Do photons have mass?

No. Photons are Baptists.

61 posted on 08/16/2007 10:31:01 AM PDT by Dr._Joseph_Warren
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To: wolfinator
Do photons have mass?

I'm pretty sure they don't, which makes the E=MC^2 equation irrelevant here. The whole basis for saying that nothing can travel faster than light is assuming that thing has mass.

68 posted on 08/16/2007 10:32:11 AM PDT by GOP_Party_Animal
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To: wolfinator
Do photons have mass?

Well, if you want to be particular about it, yes and no.

129 posted on 08/16/2007 10:49:30 AM PDT by 70times7 (Sense... some don't make any, some don't have any - or so the former would appear to the latter.)
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To: wolfinator
Do photons have mass?

I don't think so. They're Protestant.

154 posted on 08/16/2007 11:00:27 AM PDT by HoustonTech
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To: wolfinator

“Do photons have mass?”

Yes, but they are very light.


163 posted on 08/16/2007 11:05:45 AM PDT by MeanWestTexan (Kol Hakavod Fred Thompson)
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To: wolfinator
Photon torpedoes do!
170 posted on 08/16/2007 11:07:32 AM PDT by HenpeckedCon (Can I please freep just a little while longer Dear?)
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To: wolfinator
Do photons have mass?

Yes, they have mass.

One must be careful about the language. There seem to be two classes of objects, the ones that can stand still and the ones that can't. One that can (like an apple) has a "rest mass", that is, its mass when it is not moving. Its mass when it is moving will be higher, because of the energy it's carrying (note that this is subjective-- what you think is moving, I may think is standing still). You can give it as much energy as you like, it will get very fast but never reach C. Things like photons cannot stand still, they are always flying around at the speed of light (in whatever medium they're in). Do they have a rest mass? We say that they have a rest mass of zero, that way we can use the same equations to describe both types of object. But a photon in flight has mass, because it has energy. A green photon has a mass of about 4x10^-36 kilograms, about 4 millionths of an electron's rest mass.
232 posted on 08/16/2007 11:56:09 AM PDT by xenophiles
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To: wolfinator

Only the big ones.


303 posted on 08/16/2007 5:26:05 PM PDT by festus (I'm a fRedneck and proud of it.)
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To: wolfinator
Do photons have mass?

Only when they stop moving.

334 posted on 08/17/2007 2:38:55 AM PDT by Hoodat ("I get tired of people that are holier than thou because they've been pro-life longer than I have.")
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