Do you honestly believe that SR kinematics are a basis for a general proof that a massless particle with energy in any inertial frame has to have a velocity equal to c? Getting to 0/0 at some point in your argument and then backing up isn’t real elegant is it? Did you know that there is a movement to even stop talking about relativistic mass in education since it causes so many conceptual problems? Or how about, that mass is an invariant concept in Relativity, at least that’s how the actual researchers in the field talk about it. The proof you get without the geometrical view of space-time is too hand wavy for me. I guess I should have been more specific. My bad.
You are a good foil though, I’m actually trying to bring an arrogant co-worker up to speed on some of these things. He, like you, takes what you say, understands some of it, argues and points to things he really doesn’t understand, ridicules and generally walks away thinking he’s demonstrated his superior knowledge or insight. He’s also not well liked, and for some odd reason when there is actual work to do no one asks his opinion, mostly because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about but, sometimes its just because he can’t follow directions. I guess we’re all idiots down at my work place, thank goodness for co-worker who can latch on to one small idea that he has a hard time with and then assume everyone else does too. Oh, yea he’s read alot of stuff on Wiki too. Though you do seem to have read more of the pop books on physics. Let me guess you are one of those who reads books about books that contain real science. It shows from your use of non-sensical constructs to explain things like photons. Don’t worry though, I actually just take away a few concepts from here and there also, and then build on them. The difference is I read and understand the actual material.
Some final words of advice (if you even made it this far), I had a Professor once that said if he ever caught us asking questions we got from reading a Scientific American article, he would fail us. I think you’ll find that the contrived metaphors you get second hand are much harder to understand that the actual material.
Sorry about the rant. Kids!
Urk? Where did I “back up” or otherwise trod upon my own feet?
If you want to pitch personal insults, the appropriate place to do that is in The Pit.
I have degrees in Mechanical Engineering, with minors in Mathematics and Physics (including basic coursework in relativity, QM, statistical mechanics, and E&M), by the way. So yes, I have read, and been challenged to demonstrate an understanding of technical material beyond “books about books that contain real science.” I’m not sure what climbed up your rectum and died, but if you have some kind of issue with me personally, take it elsewhere.
Our current best theories all say that a photon is truly massless. However, these theories might get changed by experiment. It’s consistent with all of our best experiments that a photon might have some nonzero but incredibly small mass. So long as a photon has energy much greater than its mass, it will move at very nearly c, and if its mass is small enough relative to its energy, the difference between its true velocity and c would be imperceptible to our experiments.
That said, zero is a very easy number to work with, and it’s also perfectly consistent with all of our experiments to date. So really, all you’re doing by positing a very small but nonzero mass is just making things harder for yourself.