help me lrn2physics

Hey /sci/,

How the hell can something be massless? Someone told me that light is a massless energy particle or some shit like that but that can't be possible because in order for something to actually exist, it must be made of something, and that something has to have mass, regardless of how minute it is right? Or is this correct since light is suppose to have duality? Please edumacate me.

We say things have mass because that is how we have defined them. In order for our system to work, we have defined light as having no mass. Now the only reason to define things the way we do is because it is in accordance with physical experiment. We don't see light affected by gravity like a baseball, and we can't weigh it either.

But if you have to think of it as SOMETHING, think of it as perpendicular electric field,and magnetic field waves that store energy, which sometimes interact with things as if they were really particles. This is wave-particle duality which ALL object exhibit,  and has nothing to do with whether it has mass or not. well it DOES, but what i mean is that things both with and without mass exhibit the same wave-particle duality.

>>2

Also, 2 is pretty on point as well. I'm basically giving you the same answer, just trying to flesh it out a little more.

My suggestion? Take it for granted, there's way more important questions that need to be answered right now.