If light can be bent by gravity and objects at lightspeed have infinite mass, why arnt we crushed by sunlight?

Question

As light can be bent by gravity and therefore must have mass, and objects travelling at the speed of light have infinite mass, why do we not get crushed to death by sunlight?

Answer 1

Light has no mass, it's bent by gravity because a massive object warps the space around it. Think of it like this: if you put a bowling ball in the middle of a bed it sinks in a little bit and the mattress is deformed around it. Now, if you try to roll a marble across the bed past the bowling ball it will curve when it gets to the part of the mattress that has been deformed by the bowling ball. Same thing for light, no mass, it's just responding to the geometry created by gravity.

Answer 2

Light or photons are MASSLESS. That is the reason why they can travel at the speed of light. Any particles with mass can NEVER travel at the speed of light, only close to it (because it will require infinity of energy to reach C and we can't have inifinities in the Universe).

BTW, gravity does NOT bend light. Gravity bends the "path" taken by the light, meaning gravity bends space and time. So the shortest path any beam of light can take between 2 points is the spacetime curvature between those two points. To the light beam, it is going in a straight line. This is Einstein's General Relativity.

Answer 3

What they said. The light has no mass and it doesn't give a rat's toss for the sun's gravity. As far as it's concerned, it's going in a straight line. What it doesn't know is that the sun has bent space all around it. So to us, that looks like the light was bent. I wasn't. It was travelling in a straight line through curved space.

Answer 4

If I were to create football with pixel sized squares (just like we get in paint etc on here) we wouldn't actually have a perfect sphere. Also light would bent around this to make 'appear' sphere'. All these tiny squares being particles and interacting to create energy
The weight of gravity is converted into kinetic energy, or I believe so and I aint no scientist so don't take my word on it, I'm just sharing my thoughts on it

Answer 5

If light particles had infinite mass, they wouldn't be able to move at all, since it would require infinite energy for them to move.

Light particles don't have mass, that's why they can move at the light speed. They do, however, cause very small pressure on thigs, but very very small.

Answer 6

easy: light is not an object
and no it does not have mass.
the acceleration due to gravity is independant of mass hence something bending due to gravity tells you nothing about its mass.
Light does have momentum though (P=hc/λ). and yes it does push us... just a little (a very very little bit). If you got a really big lens you might be able to create enough photon pressure to crush someone but I think they'd burst into flames first.

Answer 7

Objects that approach the speed of light do have infinite mass, but photons do not have mass.

Answer 8

The quanta of light have no mass

Answer 9

Photons are massless particles

Answer 10

i am thinking because the earth's magnetic field protect us from that