Does Light Have Mass

Think of the oscillations that cause water waves at the beach.

Does light have mass. Light is composed of photons which have no mass so therefore light has no mass and can t weigh anything. When light passes by black holes as it shifts in that straight line of space time it doesn t speed up its acceleration which things with mass would do because light has a universally constant velocity. When you first hear it the idea that light could have mass might seem ridiculous but if it doesn t have mass why is light affected by gravity. The answer is then definitely no.

Does light have mass. The photon is a massless particle. However the frequency of the light is changed by this space time geometry distortion which affects the color of light that we can observe. These two facts about light and the particles of light called photons might make you think twice.

Surprisingly enough we see the same thing happen to light which has no mass. However light does have energy. Mass of light is not 0. The short answer is no but it is a qualified no because there are odd ways of interpreting the question which could justify the answer yes.

But talking of mass in general sense light does not have mass. Of course a discussion on light can never be limited to a general sense. Albert einstein demonstrated through photoelectric effect that light is composed of particles energy packets since it was able to knockout electrons from their orbits. Also according to the newton s gravitational law mass can be defined as a quantity which has gravitational property that is it can apply gravitational force to other body and also it can be influenced.

Generally mass is defined as the amount of substance or matter contained in the body. Interesting i thought light was actually affected by gravity only very little it hadn t occurred to me that light was just following the bent space around stars an other heavy objects. Light is composed of photons so we could ask if the photon has mass. However light itself has no mass so how is it affected by the gravity of these objects.

How could something without mass be said to have momentum. The first point to make is that while photons little packets of light energy do not have mass they do have momentum and a change in momentum yields a force so in actual fact light is able to physically interact with matter.