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I have a physics question:
Assuming that it's strong enough and there are no obstructions, is it possible for a ray of light pointed parallel to the ground to circle the globe and reach its point of origination or would it travel straight out into space?
Assuming that it's strong enough and there are no obstructions, is it possible for a ray of light pointed parallel to the ground to circle the globe and reach its point of origination or would it travel straight out into space?
The thing about light is that it sometimes acts like particles and sometimes like a wave. If I recall correctly, light is made up out of photons, which are quintessentially little packages of light energy that move like a wave but display properties of particles. Because the light energy is concentrated in clusters it can behave like a particle, but because it solely consists of energy it has no matter; therefore, it is not subjugated to the force of gravity. Since light also behaves like a wave, and waves always fluctuate around a straight axis, light always travels in a straight line.
So, the answer to your question would be that it is not possible for a ray of light to be parallel to the ground and circle the globe
.yah those were some more or less accurate statements^^ but the bottom line is still correct, for the earth the light (you can imagine a laser beam) would go straight into space.
the big mistake in the above expl. howerver is that just because its energy, doesnt mean it doesnt have a mass (as long as the photon moves but thats a lil too difficult right now)..anyways the point here is E=mc^2....
and light interacts with gravity.thats the whole point of a black hole...so much gravity that light cant escape.
of the top of my head i,d say theoretically if your planet is massive enough you can realize a circle around it, you should even be able to calculate the exact mass, in relation to radius that it needs...
Photons have zero mass and rest energy; that's what we were taught, and it also says so here: http://physics.about.com/od/lightoptics/f/photon.htm.
I'm not an expert on quantum physics, but I remember my teacher saying that according to E=mc² teleportation should be possible.
About black holes...they are capable of distorting space and I won't deny that they can even trap light; I think it has something to do with Relativity theory
.exactly, rest energy
.. but usally light doesnt rest..thats what i meant when i said too difficult to explain.and the whole concept of light interacting with gravity is a very fundamental statement of the general theory of relativity
also im actually an idiot XD ...cause what i described about the light going in a circle around the earth is practically a black hole so yes, you can calculate that if the earth had the same mass it has right now, and a radius of 9 mm !! it would go in a circle around the earth. as a comparison, right now the radius is about 6300 km which is 6 300 000 000 mm .... so the line is pretty straight
