Is Time Dependent on Mass? Exploring the Relationship between Time and Matter

[benk99nenm312]

Well first of all that doesn't convince me that a photon is massless...

Photons have relativistic mass. Does that satisfy you?

A photon is massless. Sorry.

 

[Naty1]

Timmaay:
I don't think it's particularly important for you to believe that photons have no mass, maybe it's better you don't believe it, but it is important to accept that current science says that's the case. The current explanation is that photons do have energy and since mass and energy have some deep connection, both energy and mass happen to curve spacetime. Nobody knows why yet.

Einstein did not believe that space and time were fixed and immutable when everybody else did;instead he thought the speed of light was fixed and immutable. He understood the conventional explanation at that time produced anomolies which he did not believe. So he created a new theory, one that was logical and could be verified experimentally. He turned out to be right!

Since nobody even knows what mass and energy really are at a fundamental level, maybe its useless to argue about these two different forms of what is likely a unified (single) entity. All we know today is that they appear different to us and E = mc² explains the observed relationship.

 

[Dale]

By the way, there is no way to experimentally confirm that a particle has 0 mass. All you can do is put an upper bound on the mass. Specifically, if an experiment determines the mass to be zero to within experimental error then the experimental error itself becomes an upper bound on the mass. Currently, the best upper bound on the http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/photon_mass.html" is 7E-17 eV/c² (1.2E-52 kg). So the assumption of 0 mass is pretty reasonable IMO.

 

[protonchain]

By the way, there is no way to experimentally confirm that a particle has 0 mass. All you can do is put an upper bound on the mass. Specifically, if an experiment determines the mass to be zero to within experimental error then the experimental error itself becomes an upper bound on the mass. Currently, the best upper bound on the http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/photon_mass.html" is 7E-17 eV/c² (1.2E-52 kg). So the assumption of 0 mass is pretty reasonable IMO.

I guess apart from measuring the mass/estimating it, we can usually assume that something has to have 0 mass in order for it to reach c right?

 

[Dale]

Right, but the same statement applies. We cannot experimentally confirm that a particle travels at exactly c, all we can do is determine the speed to be c to within experimental error.