[Suicide Junkie]

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.

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

[ August 18, 2003, 16:44: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]