August 19th, 2003, 09:58 PM
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Shrapnel Fanatic
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Southern CA, USA
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Re: OT - Scientific proof that there is no afterlife!
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Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
quote:
Originally posted by Slick:
Why is it that people are insisting that photons have mass when all available evidence and theory are contrary to that? I just don't understand it.
SJ, nice try  , but that calculation shows how much mass would be generated if the photon was completely anihilated. It does not show how much mass a photon has. This has been observed, by the way, in a process called "pair production". A photon (gamma) of at least 1.02 MeV can be transformed (E=mc^2) into an electron and a positron. There must be 2 particles due to conservation laws (momentum, spin, charge, etc.) beyond the scope of this discussion.
Slick.
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Photons have no rest mass. At rest, they have no energy either and don't exist anymore.
The relativistic mass is a different question.
See:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...oton_mass.html (University of California site)
Edit: better link
Exactly my point. Thanks SJ.  |