Light to matter and matter to light?
470230
Many people have, in every single nuclear reaction, whether in power plants or detonated nuclear weapons. Nuclear binding energy is generated by mass converted to energy which holds nucleons together. In nuclear reactions differences in binding energy between the reactants and products in atoms is released as light, thought not necessarily visible light.\n\nLight is also produced in particle-antiparticle annihialition. If an electron and positron collide, they annihialate each other and release 2 photon's of equal energy and momentum as the 2 original particles.\n\nIt is also possible to create particle-antiparticle pairs from photons fired into strong magnetic fields.
230711
People sort of understand waves and they understand particles, light might be a disturbance in the space time continum. Just a definate bit energy with an uncertainty where it is, traveling. Some "particles" exist for such a short time , they are more a resonance. I am looking forward to new research and thoughts on nature of light.
967323
I have no physics degree but I think this might help you.  The answer will vary slightly depending on how contemporary the physics you use to answer it is but here is an inexact answer which should give you the general idea.\n\nSo the first thing you need to know is that all matter is not in existence already.  Matter is energy in a special form where it is sort of tied up in a wiggly knot.  You can see the relation between the two in einstein's\n\nm=E/c^2   (just an alternate form of E=mc^2)\n\nwhere\nm is mass(the property that quantifies matter)\nE is energy\nc is the speed of light\n\nSo from that there is an equivalence between matter and energy.  Matter can be created by knotting up energy, or destroyed by liberating the energy it was made with.\n\nSo, without going into really advanced physics, all mass is not conserved (meaning it can be created or destroyed) but energy IS conserved, there are all kinds of rules involved, but you can interchange the two of them.\n\nWhen you release energy as photons from matter you are converting some of that matter (tied up energy) into energy.  If you could weigh the matter that radiated the photons well enough you would be able to see that it weighs less!\n\nIn "pair production" a photon can create matter; an electron and positron.\n\nAnother example of energy being released from matter is nuclear fission.  Where the matter going in weighs more than the matter after the process.  The difference of mass is the energy freed from the uranium fuel.\n\nIt's like the photon is some of the stuff that the electron is made of... (this is a loose analogy) like some of the waggling rope that the electron knot was made of.  The electron knot can lose some excitement (energy) by shedding a section of the length of the rope(photon) which goes zipping away as pure electromagnetic energy.\n\nAll the abstractions like neutron, proton, electron, photon aren't really such absolute and fundamental things that are seperate and different from each other.  They are more like energy tied up in different ways.
522376
I believe it DEPENDS on the Frequency of that photon.\nWHITE lite comes into a prism (water droplets) and the\nindividual photos are BENT (refracted) various amounts\ndue to their frequency... thus we get to see the spectrum\n... rainbow... \nSo, yes, a photon going from one medium into another\nwould alter it's path a little at the juncture, \naccording to its frequency...  no "references", \njust my  off-the-cuff reply.  good luck.
604389
Light doesn't have a rest mass, that is an inherent mass that it would have it it were at rest relative to you, but it does have a mass equivalence due to its energy. \n\nE=MC^2 gives the relationship between mass and energy, so you can rearrange this to M=E/C^2 to find the mass equivalence of a given amount of light.  The energy of light can be calculated a number of ways, and then this number can be plugged into the mass-energy equation.  Needless to say, it takes a whole lot of light to add up to a significant amount of mass.\n\nEdit:  Sorry, Mathematician, you're incorrect.  Light does have mass and it can be calculated using the mass energy equivalence.  Your argument is basically circular since you're using the definition of light not having a *rest*\n mass to say that it has no momentum, and the statement that it has no momentum to claim that it therefore has no mass.  You're right in that it has no rest mass, but that's not the only kind of mass there is.  If you've ever seen a radiometer work you've seen direct evidence of the momentum of light.
1049398
light is a wave-particle duality, and as such does not have 'mass'...
442716
I would say NO... at certain point, particles are made of energy, and energy can't be splitted as matter does...
504427
Actualy, I am an expert in this field, having a Ph.D. in Optical Sciences.\n\nI don't believe light is a particle, exactly.  It is a quantization of energy, but not really like a particle.  If it were a particle it would explain how it can propagate across nothingness.  The existence of something in space would just get into its way, so the nothingness only helps light to propagate.  But a particle implies rest mass and other physical properties which light does not have.\n\nI don't believe that empty space is something, contrary to the way some people interpret Einstein.\n\nI don't believe it is action at a distance.  Light takes a finite amount of time to cross space.  The action occurs where the light is.\n\nThe question was more of a problem when light was considered to be merely a wave.  A wave needed a medium to disturb or propagate across.  Sound moves molecules about as it propagates.  But light only bears a resemblance to a wave in the way it behaves.  It is not like a classical wave.\n\nThe best way I can think of to explain it is to understand that an electromagnetic wave carries with it its own medium.  The electric and magnetic fields oscillate, feeding on itself, so to speak.  The energy is launched into space and perpetuates itself according to the laws of physics.
697320
newton....and u better take care,..its not just any velocity ^2 but the velocity of light^2 which is a constant\nhey,...just sum extra info...if u like\nAccording to Einstein, matter and energy are just different forms of the same thing. In Einsteins theory a mass cannot be accelerated to a speed greater than that of light, hence if a mass is traveling at the speed of light and energy is added it must be converted to mass, hence any mass can be converted to energy equal to that mass x velocity squared with Vc=1. this formulae shows a relationship of the quantities of mass and energy, A conversion factor. \n\nThis is actually a restatement of F=MV^2 with a special relativity to c to describe the equivalence of mass and energy.
36613
it doesnt satisfy the qualities of being a matter, like having mass and volume, but it does have particles called photons, light behaves like a particle at times and sometimes as a wave
887711
Light IS energy...sorry I can only think of one...:(
554379
light.\n\nlet me refer you to e=mc2...light has mass energy and inertia.\na light is a wave and a particle.\nIt is in motion, and objects in motion have inertia and thusly power.\n\nThe true absence of light would exist in a vacuum. There is no pwer in a true vacuum. Even if the absence of light was "massive", that word you chose is a relative term, which is to say that massive CAN NOT imply mass, inertia, etc. The absence of light is NOT measurable because there is nothing there to exist.
361432
In scientific explanation\nThe basic particle of a matter is atom. Its also divisible but then the properties of that matter will not remain.\n\nThere can also be said every matter is from electron, protons and charge less neutrons. But then it will be devised into light.\n\nIf you look in the vacuum(absence of anything), it should be neither atom nor protons nor something...it should be "ZERO"(which is used to prove a decision "False" or absence of anything).\n\nSay "you have no answer".\nThat means you have zero answer.Think of it, keep trying and make another theory. :-D
648100
CIH is spot on, but you should also realise from what he said that electromagnetic waves or particles are ways of describing and calculating what a photon will do, they are not the actual photon itself (whatever that is). \n\nSometimes it easy to think that the description of an object IS the object, especially if it fits it well. If it was possible to write an equation or model which fully described a motor vehicle, you still wouldn't be able to drive it to the shops, but you would be able to accurately descibe how it drove there.\n\nIsn't physics wonderful! Philosopy and science all neatly wrapped up in one unifying theory of lots of theories!
471895
This is the kind of question I like ... :-)\n\nNo, this is not information transfer. I will try to enlighten the problem by formulating it more precisely.\n\nBut first, I'd like to show that if you could tranfer information faster than light, you'd get a contradiction with special relativity.\n\nSuppose A can communicate some information faster than light to B. Let A sending the information be event 1, B receiving it event 2. If the message is travelling faster than light, it can be shown that in the reference frame of A, event 1 happens _before_ event 2, while in the reference frame of B event 1 happens _after_ event 2, which is a contradiction because Bob cannot receive the message before Alice sends it. If a light-signal cannot travel between events 1 and 2, we call them spacelike separated (at least in some other languages than English we do :-) ). Spacelike separated events don't have a definite temporal order (the order depends on the reference frame).\n\nOf course, in your example there is a correlation between the outcome of Alice's and Bob's measurement, but it cannot be considered information transfer. They always knew that they would get opposite results, but they didn't know who would get |up> and who would get |down>. Information transfer would mean that Alice already has a piece of data she knows, eg. a bit of 1, and she would like to transfer it to Bob. Bob's gaining knowledge of this information is the result of Alice's sending it. So there is a definite temporal order (and causal relationship) between these events. In the entagled particle-pair example she doesn't have this piece of information before she does a measurement.\n\nHowever, you could say that A can transfer information like this: she does a measurement, and as the result of the measurement the wave function of both particles collapses, and B can measure to see if his particle is in a collapsed (|up> OR |down>) or superposed (|up> + phase_factor*|down>) state. So B will know if A has already measured or not! But B cannot decide which state the particle was in with only one measurement! And he can make only ONE measurement, because the measurement collapses the state. As a result he will always get either UP or DOWN, so he cannot tell if the original state was |up>+|down> or one of |up> or |down>.\n\nOf course if B could copy the state of his particle, he would be able to make multiple measurement on the same quantum-spin-state, but he cannot copy the state because of the no-cloning theorem (Zurek-Wootters, Nature, 1983 if I remember well, but anyway, see it on Wikipedia). Of course, if he would be able to copy the state, we would get a contradiction with special relativity.\n\nAs satanorsanta pointed out there are still problems with the _interpretation_ of quantum mechanics (especially with the measurement postulate), but I wouldn't consider this specific question unsolved.\n\nI know my English is not the best ... I hope you will understand my reasoning. If you's like to chat about these thing, send me a mail.
76751
If we define the matter as any thing has mass then photons is matter.\nThis is although the rest mass of the photon is zero but it has a mass while running at speed of light
49474
the current model of light recognizes the dual nature of light which depicts how light displays both properties of waves(ex: interference, diffraction, diffusion, refraction, etc.) and properties of matter(ex: photoelectric effect).  The reason for this is that although light does consist of waves, it also consists of tiny packets of energy called photons which occasionally display properties of matter.