Would a “massless” neutrino pass right through a black holes gravity well…or not?
I don’t know the answer for sure, but my WAG would be “no,” because though nutrinos have no rest-mass, I think they have relativistic mass (because they go so fast.)
I would say, probably it would still be affected by the black hole, but for a different reason than friedo.
The concept of rest mass vs relativistic mass is just to make the momentum equations look similar. It makes much more sense to just redefine momentum. (Chronos said something similar in another post a few days ago, but I’ve lost the link).
Anyway, a black hole affects the curve of space-time. a neutrino traveling along a path in the curved space time will still be affected by it, much like photons (which have no mass) are.
Neutrinos would be affected by black holes, just like photons are. A neutrino inside the event horizon wouldn’t be able to escape because neutrinos travel at the speed of light and the gavitational pull would be more than the speed of light.
If photons have no mass how can their impact “push” a light sail?
Their momentum is transfered to the light sail.
Arjuna34
In any event, whether neutrinos have mass or not, black holes are regions where (as far as we know) spacetime is curved past the point of no return. It’s not that there’s an irresistable “force” that you could “fight”; it’s that space itself is now on the Singularity Express. Once you cross the event horizon, there’s nowhere to go but down.
How can something with no mass have a transferable “momentum”? If momentum is the product of the mass of a particle and its velocity and there is no mass then how can we speak of a massless particles “momentum”.
No being quarrelsome… just curious.
Relativistic momentum isn’t mass*velocity. Have a look at this.