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totally mind-bending but, what if light actually had mass? Like even if it was super tiny, we'd have all this mass moving around at the speed of light. Could be enough to change gravity around them, or maybe even slow them down? Space-time could be more messed up than we ever thought. Science peeps, help me out here.
Submitted 10 months, 1 week ago by physics_geek_42
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If photons had mass however minuscule, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics would be up for review. BLACKBODY RADIATION, anyone? The spectrum of emitted light from a body would be quite different—probably wouldn't even be a 'spectrum' as we know it.
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I'm not a scientist, but this makes me think... Stars give off a mind-blowing amount of light, so if light had mass, wouldn't that potentially cause stars to lose mass super quickly? Almost like a constant mass ejection. That'd change the whole stellar lifecycle.
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From a gravitational standpoint, it's interesting. Current models assume light doesn't have mass so it doesn't directly contribute to gravity. It does however, bend in strong gravitational fields (think black holes), which is a cornerstone of General Relativity. If photons had mass, even if minimal, they'd contribute their own gravity, which would add an entirely new layer to cosmic structures. Not only that, but their speed would decrease as they climbed out of gravitational wells due to losing kinetic energy. Dark matter might not even be a thing if light had mass since it could account for some of the missing gravitational pull in galaxies.
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Actually, if light had mass, the whole universe as we know it would be completely different. Even if it was a tiny, tiny mass, due to the immense speeds it travels, the kinetic energy would be huge! Light being massless is what allows it to travel at 'c', the speed of light. If photons had mass, they wouldn’t be able to achieve that speed without infinite energy according to relativity.