A Twist of Logic

[Dark Mind]

Hypothetical object, hypothetically able to apply force to it...

 

I would leave out all equations here and simply state that hypothetically, it would continue in the direction the force was applied until it encountered an obstacle (eg a wall). Upon striking said obstacle it would encounter zero friction, and rebound away at same velocity and acceleration, and continue on, picking up speed (Since it is encountering zero friction) until reaching c and then... Accelerating past it. Photons have mass, as stated above. This hypothetical object does not, I would postulate it's velocity would become infinite in a matter of seconds if someone propelled it by breathing on it :naughty:.

[ronthepon]

Why infinite in a matter of seconds? More like instantaneous.

 

Further, relativity asserts that it should reach c, not infinite speed.

[Dark Mind]

I'm just saying... hypothetically...

 

I mean even photons have mass, and that has to put some sort of limitation on their maximum speed they can achieve. That is actually apparent to me based on the speed of light in various media. It travels slower through water than air, and slower through air than space. It's encountering friction. Would a massless object encounter such friction? :confused:

 

Would it then be limited to speed c? :)

 

I don't know. Honestly I'm asking, do you know if it would?

[infamous]

Since Little Bang may be truly interested, and since Infamous sounds like a mafia don, I'll post the rest of my thoughts on the topic.

Not a mafia don sir, just your friendly forum Moderator. We do have rules against off topic remarks and hijacking someone else's thread at Hypography and it's part of my job to enforce these rules. If you have a problem with this, please send me a PM and we can discuss your queries................Infy

[Erasmus00]

I mean even photons have mass, and that has to put some sort of limitation on their maximum speed they can achieve. That is actually apparent to me based on the speed of light in various media. It travels slower through water than air, and slower through air than space. It's encountering friction. Would a massless object encounter such friction? :shrug:

 

Photons have no rest mass. Special relativity shows that particles with no rest mass can only exist at velocity c.

 

Consider: [math] E = \frac{M_0c^2}{sqrt{{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}} [/math]

 

where M0 is the rest mass, E is the energy, v the velocity and c the speed of light.

 

If the rest mass is 0, then the energy is 0 and we have no mass or energy, hence nothing. However, there is an ambiguity in this formula for the case when v = c. In this case, E is undefined. It turns out from other relativistic considerations we can derive the (independant) equation:

 

[math] E^2 -p^2c^2 = M_0^2c^4[/math] where p is momentum and all other variables as before.

 

Here we see that if the rest mass is 0, and the velocity is c then we can define energy by the relation E = pc.

 

As to light slowing down when it enters a material this is a different phenomena. When light hits the material is excites electrons. These excited electrons have some non-zero decay time, so it takes awhile for the light to be spit back out.

 

Edit: The first formula also explains why particles with non-zero rest mass can never accelerate to c. As they approach c the energy balloons.

-Will

[Dark Mind]

Thanks Erasmus :shrug:. I learned something new from the site, again :).

 

That explained it very well. So I guess Little Bang is gonna have to elaborate more on the intracicies of his hypothetical object if we want to answer his question better...

[Farsight]

Actually, I wasn't joking about "the crease in my pants".

 

We tend to talk about entities in the sub-atomic world as particles, and all too quickly start thinking about something akin to a billiard ball, with a size, a surface, a position, a fixed mass, et cetera. The point I want to get across is that this is the wrong concept. An entity such as an electron is not a "thing" that has mass, spin, and charge, it is mass, spin, and charge. And these things are not solid objects. They are instead intangible properties associated with some region of spacetime that has no clear boundary.

 

In order to get a handle on this, it's useful to think about everday "objects" that have no instrinsic solidity or size. You could consider a photon to be the electromagnetic equivalent of a shout - a scream would equate to a higher-energy photon in the X-ray range, and a shriek might be in the gamma-ray band. Or you could consider an electron to be a rotating circular crease like the one round your trouser turnup twisted like a moebius strip. These are not perfect analogies, but they get you used to thinking about intangibles.

 

Now when you think "particle", the unsuitability of the billiard-ball concept becomes apparent. And a massless "particle" doesn't seem quite so strange.

[infamous]

Actually, I wasn't joking about "the crease in my pants".

 

We tend to talk about entities in the sub-atomic world as particles, and all too quickly start thinking about something akin to a billiard ball, with a size, a surface, a position, a fixed mass, et cetera. The point I want to get across is that this is the wrong concept. An entity such as an electron is not a "thing" that has mass, spin, and charge, it is mass, spin, and charge. And these things are not solid objects. They are instead intangible properties associated with some region of spacetime that has no clear boundary.

 

In order to get a handle on this, it's useful to think about everday "objects" that have no instrinsic solidity or size. You could consider a photon to be the electromagnetic equivalent of a shout - a scream would equate to a higher-energy photon in the X-ray range, and a shriek might be in the gamma-ray band. Or you could consider an electron to be a rotating circular crease like the one round your trouser turnup twisted like a moebius strip. These are not perfect analogies, but they get you used to thinking about intangibles.

 

Now when you think "particle", the unsuitability of the billiard-ball concept becomes apparent. And a massless "particle" doesn't seem quite so strange.

Thanks for the excellent thoughts Popular; Now your on topic........................Infy

[Farsight]

Anyhow, sorry I was a bit glib. I didn't mean to be off topic. To try and answer the question:

 

I want to postulate a hypothetical object. It occupies a very small finite volume of space but is unique in that it has no mass. What would happen to the object if we apply a force to it? According to F = MA if we solve for it’s acceleration it would = the force/ the mass and would be infinite. Doesn’t this hypothetical question have all the attributes of the photon? What do you think?

 

If we think about something like an electron, we can deflect it, as in an electron beam. This is because of the property called "charge", which gives us a handle to achieve motion using a "force" that we call magnetism. We can think of mass in a similar fashion. It tells us there's a handle to achieve motion using the "force" of gravity, or the "force" of mass collision or spring impulse. A totally massless entity would have no handle for the force to act upon, so you wouldn't be able to move it, or stop it. The F=MA becomes an irrelevant string of zeros.

 

Whilst a "quantum of charge" is commonly known as an electron, a "quantum of charge movement" is commonly known as a photon. So your hypothetical entity is not necessarily a photon. Neutrinos sound like a better bet. A quick look on Google says they're like electrons but have no charge, and I didn't want to complicate matters with electron spin and mass. So I'm rather struggling to say what instrinsic fundamental property of our world is thought of as the particle called the neutrino.

[HydrogenBond]

Something that everyone has overlooked is that a charge without mass would fit the bill and could be acted on by EM force. With no mass or inertia, the charge will act like a slow speed photon accelerating to C.

[arkain101]

I think for this "hypothetically", forces come from masses. So the accleration would only be as great as the mass that gives the force.

 

The fastest thing we know is light. So if a photon hit this particle, it would carry it along at the speed at which it travels. This is all that would could happen from acceptable theory.

[ronthepon]

I think that to get further into this we can discuss what exactly we mean by a 'particle', or an 'object'.

 

As I once believed, it had to do with a certain discrete thingy which has defined properties. Mass, spin, charge, etc.

 

Here, we have a particle which lacks these basic traits. Now what is it? Does it exist at all?

 

Now we also have neutrinos. What about them? They may indeed fit the figure we have. (possibly)

[Erasmus00]

Something that everyone has overlooked is that a charge without mass would fit the bill and could be acted on by EM force. With no mass or inertia, the charge will act like a slow speed photon accelerating to C.

 

It wouldn't act like a slow photon. The only way a massless entity can exist is at the speed of light. See my earlier post.

-Will

[arkain101]

I believe all things are functions of one thing. This one thing could be described as blipping infinity. Blips that seap out of infinity.

 

In this concept any action or change of a function will cause a equal reaction in one or more forms that euqally devide the value of that change.

 

So mass would be a result of one or more other functions.

 

An object is a collection of functions forming the action of zero frequency and zero space energy.

 

So if a particle or object has no mass, it is not a version of collected frequency acting as a sub unit.

[Little Bang]

The only reason that I started this thread was to start some thinking about photons. I think a complete understand for creation of the photon is a prerequisite for our ability to comprehend the universe. If someone gives you a stated problem to solve and you don't understand the data presented, then you have no chance of finding a solution. I fell that is where we find ourselves today.

[Farsight]

I've got a simple concept here, if anybody can help me improve it I'd be grateful:

 

Charge is a dimension of the Universe. Imagine a charged particle as a tent pole at one end of a "rubber tent" Universe, with another charged particle at the other end. Kick your nearest tentpole and a little ripple of height variation shoots away in the direction of your kick. That's what a photon is - a charge-variation ripple. If it goes anywhere near the other tentpole it gets absorbed and vanishes, and you see the other tentpole moving like you'd kicked it directly. Or like you'd shot it with a bullet.

[infamous]

Think of the photon in this manner; Electricity and magnetism are two characteristics of the electromagnetic wave. The EM wave is two dimensional where electricity and magnetism are these two dimensions set at 90% to each other. When the wave interacts with other matter or intersects another wave at various angles, the photon particle is formed. This particle can not be rationalized as a solid object but rather is a vortex of rotational energy similar to what we see when the weather produces such things as tornados or violent thunder storms. I realize this is a very simplified characterization of how the quantum world works but it does bring some understandability to this very complex system of interactions. Space is profuse with EM waves, these waves give rise to quantum fluctuations resulting in electron positron pair production. I believe what has just been discribed is an accurate portrayal of the resulting events. EM waves intersecting each other giving rise to entities we call particles. Particles are nothing more than localized orbital EM flux. It is theorized that all particles will eventually decay back into EM waves. There is ongoing research to detect the decay of the proton which would add much to proving this theory....................................Infy