The Gravity of a Photon
jwkennington.com
The Gravity of a Photon
1–10 of 90 posts
Re: The Gravity of a Photon
#2> because photons have rest energy that can be viewed as mass in special relativity
What?
Re: The Gravity of a Photon
#3> because photons have rest energy that can be viewed as mass in special relativity What?
Hence I said my friend was being a bit “interpretive”. He really meant that though photons have zero rest mass, they nonzero inertial mass (E=mc^2)
Re: The Gravity of a Photon
#4Wow I didn't expect that! For the layperson that's really interesting.
"the conventional electromagnetic fields, and the photons that constitute them, impact the gravitational field despite having no inertial mass!"
Does that mean the build up of the photon sphere around a black hole would have a significant impact on space time?
Re: The Gravity of a Photon
#5Wow I didn't expect that! For the layperson that's really interesting. "the conventional electromagnetic fields, and the photons that constitute them, impact the gravitational field despite having no inertial mass!" Does that mean the build up of the photon sphere around a black hole would have a significant impact on space time?
The photon sphere is not a place where photons collect because the orbits along the sphere are unstable fixed points. Small perturbations from these orbits either fall into the black hole or escape to infinity.
Re: The Gravity of a Photon
#6This is really interesting. Perhaps there is also a chance that electromagnetic fields are indeed entirely responsible for gravity, in some complicated yet unknown manner.
Re: The Gravity of a Photon
#7> because photons have rest energy that can be viewed as mass in special relativity What?
Hence I said my friend was being a bit “interpretive”. He really meant that though photons have zero rest mass, they nonzero inertial mass (E=mc^2)
Maybe you could write “because photons have energy that can be viewed as (relativistic) mass” then. Or maybe he did really refer to the “rest energy” of photons? That seems weird even for an experimentalist ;-)
Re: The Gravity of a Photon
#8> because photons have rest energy that can be viewed as mass in special relativity What?
Hence I said my friend was being a bit “interpretive”. He really meant that though photons have zero rest mass, they nonzero inertial mass (E=mc^2)
That still does not make any sense. I'm sorry to be so direct, but I'm really worried laypeople here are going to think that this is correct.
Re: The Gravity of a Photon
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hence I said my friend was being a bit “interpretive”. He really meant that though photons have zero rest mass, they nonzero inertial mass (E=mc^2)
That still does not make any sense. I'm sorry to be so direct, but I'm really worried laypeople here are going to think that this is correct.
A layperson here. Don't.
Re: The Gravity of a Photon
#10The important thing to remember is it's called the stress-energy tensor for a reason, it's not just mass distribution that causes curvature.
Thought experiment: which will curve spacetime more, a 1kg box of gas at 1K or the same box after the gas inside is raised to 293K?