Does light, theoretically, have any mass?

[Ipquarx]

http://io9.com/scientists-freeze-light-for-an-entire-minute-912634479

Oops, quantum mechanics seems to have forgeted you.

Did you just look at the title and think instant contradiction or do you actually understand fully what's going on

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[Steve5451²]

No, it does not. Otherwise all the light would bend towards the ground.
Large amounts of gravity can distort light, but by very slim amounts. That has to do with more complicated stuff, though.

[.:FancyPants:.]

No, it does not. Otherwise all the light would bend towards the ground..

i agree that light is techincally mass-less, but this is kind of poor justification since if light DID bend towards the ground, you'd never be able to see it actually occur since it's moving so quickly. and techincally, gravity bends the entirety of space-time, so regardless of mass, light is still affected by gravity.

aka black holes, which are also bends in space-time but are further complicated in ways that i still can't quite wrap my head around.

if you wanted to i could make it a weight joke
but it wasn't intended to be

yo mamma so fat, she makes black holes jealous of how light bends around her.

[Hugums]

Isn't this topic asking about what is currently one of the largest debates in all of physics? That being said, there's no definable way to measure the mass of light, you'd think that if someone got enough of it in one spot they could just use math to figure out how heavy that is. That then leads to the problem of actually measuring the volume/area of light, which I'm quite sure can't be dealt with. Regardless of the answer to the question I'm sure the experiment to find out the answer will somehow involve lasers, you can quote me on that.

[Night Fox]

solar sails wouldn't even be a possibility if there wasn't something in the light to push on the sail. so there's definitely gotta be something there. even if it's the tiniest amount of mass

[Kingdaro]

Mass isn't what's pushing the sails though, it's energy. Moving energy. That's what light is, energy.

[BluetoothBoy]

i agree that light is techincally mass-less, but this is kind of poor justification since if light DID bend towards the ground, you'd never be able to see it actually occur since it's moving so quickly. and techincally, gravity bends the entirety of space-time, so regardless of mass, light is still affected by gravity.

aka black holes, which are also bends in space-time but are further complicated in ways that i still can't quite wrap my head around.

yo mamma so fat, she makes black holes jealous of how light bends around her.

Finally, someone who tells it like it is. No, light has no mass, but it is affected by gravity because it travels along through spacetime, just like everything else. When gravity bends the spacetime, the light bends with it.

As for the solar sails, the light may be mass-less, but it still has energy. Knowing this, I'm fairly certain the sails convert the non-kinetic energy of light into kinetic energy to move the sails.

However, Hugums makes a valid point - this is all still too theoretical to say for sure whether or not light has mass. However, according to what we know and can observe in the present, it does not.

[Ceist]

imo light has an unmeasurable amount of mass.

No, it does not. Otherwise all the light would bend towards the ground.
Large amounts of gravity can distort light, but by very slim amounts. That has to do with more complicated stuff, though.

photons move in straight paths always unless of course acted on by gravity. earth has gravity and last time i checked mass has gravity. earth has very very large mass, therefore lots of gravity so in turn, earth does affect light.
Black holes for example are massive gravity wells, they have so much mass and are so dense, most light cannot escape it.

Mass isn't what's pushing the sails though, it's energy. Moving energy. That's what light is, energy.

everything is energy. mass can be converted to energy (heat energy, friction, etc). A good example of this too is fission. When we break down uranium-transuranium elements, they split into two different elements, but if you were to add the mass of both elements up it would not equal the mass of the previously fissioned element. This proves that mass was transformed into energy, or heat.

[Ceist]

light also has an unmeasurable amount sass

[Night Fox]

Mass isn't what's pushing the sails though, it's energy. Moving energy. That's what light is, energy.

what pushes it is light reflecting off of it. some energy is absorbed from the light, but that becomes heat, not movement

[Ipquarx]

light itself has no mass, but it does have tiny amounts of momentum that can transfer to other objects. Light consists 100% of photons, and photons have no mass.

[Night Fox]

you can't have momentum without mass
momentum is mass times velocity
anything multiplied by zero is zero

[Ceist]

light itself has no mass, but it does have tiny amounts of momentum that can transfer to other objects. Light consists 100% of photons, and photons have no mass.

solar sails use radiation pressure. which is absorption or reflection, or both.

you can't have momentum without mass
momentum is mass times velocity
anything multiplied by zero is zero

this.

[$trinick]

Due to wave particle duality, light does carry higgs-boson field particles meaning that, yes, light has mass.

[Ceist]

Due to wave particle duality, light does carry higgs-boson field particles meaning that, yes, light has mass.

this too.