Thursday, July 10, 2014

If the speed of light is constant, then photons must have no mass



Armchair Science is a Kindle ebook available at Amazon. It contains over 120 short mysteries of science that can be solved from a single observational clue, without the need for experimentation.




Science is not a collection of facts. Science is what facts teach us; what we can learn about our universe, and ourselves, by deductive thinking. From observations of the night sky, made without the aid of telescopes, we can deduce that the universe is expanding, that the universe is not infinitely old, and why black holes exist. Without resorting to experimentation or mathematical analysis, we can deduce that gravity is a curvature in space-time, that the particles that compose light have no mass, that there is a theoretical limit to the number of different elements in the universe, and that the earth is billions of years old. Likewise, simple observations on animals tell us much about the migration of continents, the evolutionary relationships among classes of animals, why the nuclei of cells contain our genetic material, why certain animals are long-lived, why the gestation period of humans is 9 months, and why some diseases are rare and other diseases are common. In “Armchair Science”, the reader is confronted with 129 scientific mysteries, in cosmology, particle physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine. Beginning with simple observations, step-by-step analyses guide the reader toward solutions that are sometimes startling, and always entertaining. “Armchair Science” is written for general readers who are curious about science, and who want to sharpen their deductive skills.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

Clue 9. The speed of light is constant.

Deduction. Photons have no mass.

Illustration. Atoms can be stimulated to emit photons as a narrow, cohesive beam of particles (i.e., laser beams). Source: U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory.

Resolution. Though we expect everyone to understand one another when the term "mass" is mentioned, we should admit that "mass" is at least as difficult to comprehend as any of the fundamental mysteries that consume the lives of physicists. Mass is best described functionally, as a physical property that renders matter resistant to acceleration or deceleration. Essentially, if you need to push on something to make it move faster, then it must have mass; the harder you need to push, the more the mass. We can easily measure an object's mass, but doing so does not explain how the object acquired its resistance to acceleration (i.e., how the object acquired its mass).

Visible light, and all electromagnetic radiation cannot be accelerated or decelerated; its speed is constant. Light is composed of particles known as photons that travel at the speed of light. Because light cannot be accelerated or decelerated, it must be massless; hence the photons that compose light are massless particles.

I urge you to read more about this book. There's a good "look inside" of the book at the Amazon store.

- Jules J. Berman, Ph.D., M.D.

tags: deductive science, science mysteries, deductive reasoning, ebook, general science reading, general science book, science puzzles, scientific amusements