Abstract
Prevailing and conventional wisdom as drawn from both Professor Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (STR) and our palatable experience, holds that photons are massless particles and that, every particle that travels at the speed of light must—accordingly, be massless. Amongst other important but now resolved problems in physics, this assumption led to the Neutrino Mass Problem—namely, “Do neutrinos have mass?” Neutrinos appear very strongly to travel at the speed of light and according to the afore-stated, they must be massless. Massless neutrinos have a problem in that one is unable to explain the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations because this requires massive neutrinos. Experiments appear to strongly suggest that indeed, neutrinos most certainly are massive particles. While this solves the problem of neutrino oscillation, it directly leads to another problem, namely that of “How can a massive particle travel at the speed of light? Is not this speed a preserve and prerogative of only massless particles?” We argue herein that in principle, it is possible for massive particles to travel at the speed of light. In presenting the present letter, our hope is that this may aid or contribute significantly in solving the said problem of “How can massive particles travel at the speed of light?”
Highlights
Despite the lack of solid experimental proof, it is generally agreed that photons have no mass
We place the two dispersion relations (1) and (2) into the dock for some cross-examination, where-after we come to the interesting conclusion that it must in-principle be possible to have massive photons obeying these two relations simultaneously and concurrently i.e., massive particles that travel at the speed of light c
Ceteris paribus: in the light of popular contemporary physics, how can a massive particle travel at the speed of light? Is not this speed a preserve and prerogative of only massless particles? If observations are to take their rightful place in Science, which is that they take precedence over all our theories, we have but no choice expect to accept that massive particles most certainly can travel at the speed of light as strongly appears to be the case with neutrinos
Summary
Despite the lack of solid experimental proof (see e.g. Hojman & Benjamin 2012, Burman 1972a,2,3, Goldhaber and Nieto 1971), it is generally agreed (perhaps believed) that photons have no mass. We place the two dispersion relations (1) and (2) into the dock for some cross-examination, where-after we come to the interesting conclusion that it must in-principle be possible to have massive photons (i.e. non-zero rest mass photons) obeying these two relations simultaneously and concurrently i.e., massive particles that travel at the speed of light c. On a more fundamental level, there is no priori nor posteriori justification for this clandestine assumption If these two energies are different, that is, say the E in E2 = p2c2 + m20c4 is the total gravitational energy Eg of the photon so that Eg2 = p2c2 + m20c4; and the E in E = pc is say total kinetic energy EK of the photon so that EK = pc, it is possible for mi= 0. It is suggested that all photons may very well be massive all having the mass, in the same manner that electrons (and protons) have mass
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