A Book of Magic Spells

A conversation with Keith Allpress, published writer for Huffington Post and Forbes..

Question: "If an object has to gain infinite mass to reach the speed of light, why isn't the photon said to be an object with infinite mass?"

Keith:  You have defined objects with total generality, and then complained that generality fails. To fix it, be careful with making such sweeping definitions. If you pay attention to the correct definition, you should discover that only an object with rest mass or invariant mass is subject to the implication, whereas a photon does not have that reference state. So the inference cannot be made. We can rewrite now “An object with invariant mass would have to gain infinite mass energy to reach the speed of light”. The devil is in the details.

I bet by now you are wondering how this photon idea is supposed to enter the picture. For starters Einstein never used that word, it was invented by a chemist who had a wrong idea about it, but the name stuck. Quanta was the term used by the German scientists, which is better. But quanta of what? That's the million dollar question. Quanta in the amounts of certain properties, as Einstein confirmed for light.

Me: “What light is, is purely and simply electromagnetic forces that propagate!”
The name of the wave makes it sound like an electron wave [electro]. Electrons, not photons, have a magnetic [charge] property.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/debrog.html

Keith: No light doesn't follow the electron wave function, and you are right, it doesn't transport mass or charge. As far as electrons go, they are on essence a collection of properties. But that's all everything is, deep down, right? These properties are spread out. In fact electric properties extend to infinity in theory.

Me: “No light doesn't follow the electron wave function”

Okay, I’ll have to trust you on that. Can you explain the wave name’s meaning, then?

Keith: Yes, it's a book of magic spells that works perfectly.

Me: Interesting answer.

 Let’s examine your fatal logic error. You’ve stated that light has no rest mass making it massless. Now, we know there is only mass and energy. If light is 0% mass, it is necessarily 100% energy.

Now, let’s see what happens to your claim:

“Light carries energy”

~translates to~

“100% energy carries energy”

Here’s another fatal logic error of yours:

“an instantaneous sound must have an infinity of frequencies”

An instantaneous sound is an actualized phenomenon. The actual can only have finite properties. Infinity is a potential state. Once actualization has occurred, a limited phenomenon has occurred.