What is the opposite of light?

Question

Darkness isn't the opposite of light, its the absence of light...what is the opposite of light?

Answer 1

i dont know, anti-photons? dont know if its worth asking this question.

Answer 2

opposite of light, absence of light, same thing in my opinion... So im still going to go with darkness as being the opposite of light.

Answer 3

But isn't "absence" the opposite of "presence"? If there is light, light is present, if there is no light, light is absent and it is dark. It would seem that this reasoning would make dark the opposite of light.

Answer 4

I would actually say that dark is the opposite.
If light is one end of the scale then no light (or darkness) is at the other making them opposites.

The only other suggestion I have is space.Space is nothing it is merely a vacuum an absense of matter or mass and although you can *see* light in space it does not reflect light therefore when seen it appears in the negative black (or dark) if you shone a light into pure space you would still see black,therefore it's the only other opposite that I could think off.

If that doesn't work,how about heavy,heavy is the opposite of light xD

Answer 5

Darkness is a concept made up by man. You can't measure darkness so it doesn't scientifically exist. Light is made of photons and the opposite of photons are antiphotons. BUT photons and antiphotons are actually the same particle because photons have no charge. Some particles are their own antimatter. So in a way, the opposite of light is just light.

Hope it helps.

Answer 6

The opposite of 'sour' is not 'absence of sour'. The opposite of light is the answer to the question 'What must be added to light to make nothing?'

The answer, curiously, is another light. Or put it another way, an antiphoton. But the antiparticle of a photon (= 'antiphoton') is also a photon.

So eelfins is right, although I find his answer long and rambling - rather like this one perhaps?

Isn't physics fun? !!!

Answer 7

There is no such thing as "the opposite of light."

For one thing, true opposites are adjectives, not nouns. For another, light is a simply a restricted range of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation.

The question makes as much or little sense as asking "What is the opposite of water? or of sound? or of a 1957 Chevy?"

True, light can be made to cancel itself, but that does not mean any "opposite of light" exists.

Answer 8

It is a lack of light, hence a lack of photons either reflected from a surface or emitted. This can be in the visual part of the spectrum but also in another part of the EM spectrum such as X-rays.

Answer 9

heavy

Edit: Just joking. It is darkness. Everything has an opposite, otherwise it wouldn't exist. So light wouldn't exist without darkness. Unless you are talking about the word " light" as a noun.

Opposite refers to "what is found in the other side of the balance".

Darkness does exist. It is probably what is present continuously, and light, when on, lays on top of the darkness.

I keep editing because I Keep thinking about the question...

Answer 10

Light is its own opposite. Light is energy, which can be used to create matter, but only in matter-antimatter pairs. Then when matter and antimatter combine again, it releases energy, the summation of both positive and negatively charged matter. There is no such thing as negative energy per se because energy is already both positive and negative because of its wavelength. It spends half its time as negative energy and the other as positive energy. This is demonstrated in the two-slit experiment in which photons can leave interference patterns. When high amplitude waves combine they have double their energy, but when both high and low waves combine they cancel each other out, resulting in zero energy.

Answer 11

light is the sum of all the colors (wave length radiations), the contrary will be the absence of colors.