🚀 go-pugleaf

William J. Keith <will.keith@mail.utexas.edu> wrote in article
<will.keith-0304971218210001@pmclm18.ph.utexas.edu>...
> In article <3342EBCB.6677@boeing.com>, Fred McGalliard
> <frederick.b.mcgalliard@boeing.com> wrote:
> 
> > Chris Wagner wrote:
> > 
> > (a nice description of rest and relative mass. Thanks Chris.)
> > 
> > But now I would like to take this a few steps deeper. What mass do I
> > deal with when the object is a collection of confined photons, and
> > possibly some neutrinos. The rest mass of a confined photon should be
> > it's ordinary mass, or just it's energy, eh? The gravitational mass of
a
> > star then is (a bunch of stuff) + (the mass of the confined photons).
> > When the confined photons go streaming off to infinity, they can leave
> > as much as all of their mass/energy behind. Where is it? How is it left
> > behind?
> 
> Photons do not have a rest mass.  They have an energy equal to Planck's
> constant time the speed of light divided by their wavelength, but no
> mass.  This is *equialent* to a mass, and produces gravitational
> attraction, but a photon travels at the speed of light in all reference
> frames - thus it is never at rest in your reference frame - thus it never
> has a rest mass.
> 
> The gravitational mass of a star = the mass of all the matter + the mass
> equivalence of all the free energy.
> 
> When a photon goes screaming off to infinity, it carries its energy, and
> the equivalent gravitational attraction, with it.  Nothing is left behind
> in the star except fusion products lighter than the original fuel; the
> star is now a tiny bit less massive than before.

The fictional entity, the photon, does not carry energy.
If it exists, and carries anything, it carries action.

The energy change observed in an "effect" system,
is a function of its' velocity relative to the
assumed "cause" system. 

In fact, photons are fictional entities,
and EM waves are an expression of
the probability of effects occurring
in some assumed surface about causes.

Photon is the name given to a cause or an effect.
If one assumes that photons are flying
through space, one must also assume that
automobile accidents are flying though space
looking for a suitable place to "collapse".

The only thing that exists between a
cause and an effect is an interaction time.
Nothing else is needed. Photons are
not needed, EM waves are not needed,
fields are not needed, and space is not needed.

Tom Potter          http://pobox.com/~tdp