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Subject: RE: Light, Gravity, and Newton's 3rd Law

Date: Wed Sep 25 10:37:53 1996
Posted by Ronald Fisch
Position: Physics, Washington University

Message:

The correct statement is that a photon has no rest mass. This means that there is no reference frame in which a photon is at rest. Or in other words, a photon always moves at the speed of light. If you change to a different reference frame, the wavelength of the photon changes, but it still moves at the speed of light. The gravitational interaction couples to the total energy of any particle. Since a photon has energy, it does indeed interact gravitationally, even though it has no rest mass. To learn more about relativity click here.



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