does light has any mass?

Answer 1

light is a wave-particle duality, and as such does not have 'mass'...

Answer 2

Light does not have any mass because of two reasons. The first reason is because light is made of particles called photons. This particle sometimes portraits wave characteristic in certain conditions. Although a single photon has zero mass, multi-particle objects including photons may collectively have mass. The mass that these photons add up is very, very tiny that you can't really call it a mass. Another reason why light can't have mass is because if it did, then they can't travel at the speed of light. If light contains mass, it slows it down because of the weight that it carries.

Answer 3

Particle physicists refer to "rest mass" when discussing if a particel has mass. That mean whata would it's mass be if it were still becuase a fast moving particle has more kinetic energy than one at rest. This translates into more inertia or mass. Photons have no rest mass. Light can be either a particle or a wave depending on how you measure it, but it's not a particle liek a proton. It's a packet of energy.

Answer 4

Light does not have mass.

Also, light is both a particle and a wave...depending on how it is being observed. This is one of the tenents of Quantum Mechanics. The behavior of light can be explained exactly the same by considering it to be either a wave or a particle.

Answer 5

1> photons do have mass.
2> the speed of light in a vacuum is theoretically not surpassable, but that is a theory. what if it's close to the "absolute speed" but is still just shy of it? Then photons have mass.
3> when an object's velocity raises, it seems to have greater mass, but that is a function of inertia. Its inertia increases without bound. If its mass increased without bound, we'd all be sucked in by the gravity of each photon as each photon became a black hole.

Answer 6

yes it does, think of e=mc2. So if the mass of light is 0 then it's energy would also be 0, which is not true. It's mass is really really small but it does have a mass

Answer 7

Light which is composed of photons has no mass, otherwise it could not travel at the speed of light! As any object with mass approaches the speed of light, its mass increases infinitely.

Answer 8

No, but....

When scientists refer to mass, usually they mean rest-mass. Photons have no rest mass. However, they do have energy. So, *in principle*, you could detect a gravitational field from the instantaneous electromagnetic radiation field in a particular volume.

For example, consider the case of a core-collapse supernova, in which a significant fraction of a solar mass is converted into to energy. I can't see that such a conversion would in and of itself change the gravitational field to an observer at some distance from the star.

(at least until the star redistributes itself assymmetrically - expodes, forms bi-polar jets, etc)

If I'm wrong, I hope an astrophysicist posts something to set me straight.

Answer 9

The fact that light has been show to push against matter it contacts shows thatr it has what is called radiation pressure. Einstein used this idea to show that light has energy with the characteristics of mass, or inertia. This is the basis for His equation E=mc^2. This explains why one form of energy can be changed into another.

Answer 10

In theory no. If it did every particle (quanta) of light would be breaking Einstein's theory of relativity. Basically once a mass reaches the speed of light, it would have an infinite amount of energy. Impossible.

Answer 11

From what I remember (someone will correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure) is that light is made of electomagnetic particles (photons).

The photons sometimes seem to act like particles, but under some circumstances they appear to act like waves, in actual fact they act like both all the time.

So, because photons have mass, so does light.