Now the key point is the photon has zero mass. It's massless . And that's essential to make electromagnetism a long-range force. The electron here repels an electron in Alpha Centauri.-- OK-- or anywhere in another galaxy.
x, because both springs feel the same force of the weight pulling from below. So in the case of ideal massless springs, you would end up with exactly 2x of displacement. Now, there's another way to connect these two springs to the weight, and that is in parallel.
OK, again, what's this got to do with anything? But now what if these particles are massless , just like the photon, but they interact with this invisible background field it's everywhere
Planes, the moon, the sun, tides-- everything rings this machine. We say that all particles that are massless travel at the speed of light.
Planes, the moon, the sun, tides-- everything rings this machine. And as long as that photon is massless , it will travel at the speed of light.
OK, again, what's this got to do with anything? and Z particles and all the particles and nature were massless , as they are at a fundamental level, if it weren't for this field frozen in the universe, then
The electron here repels an electron in Alpha Centauri.-- OK-- or anywhere in another galaxy. And the reason is, because the photon is massless , it can carry an arbitrarily small amount of energy. And if it can carry an arbitrarily small amount of energy, then it can exist for an arbitrarily long time before it has to disappear without violating
OK, again, what's this got to do with anything? But the neat thing is, if they're massless , then the mathematics of the calculations involved by the exchange of these massless particles
And if it can exist for an arbitrary long time, it can travel from here to Alpha Centauri before it's absorbed. So the fact that electromagnetism is a long-range force is uniquely related to the fact that the photon is massless , in this picture. OK? And this photon, because you can't see it, it's called a virtual photon because it doesn't really exist.
and electrons and quarks are considered as fundamental particles. According to the standard model, all the fundamental particles are originally massless , like photons, the particle carrying electromagnetic force, also known as a particle of light, whose speed in space-time is the maximum allowed speed,
So if you emit a particle that's very massive, it can travel only a very short time, and therefore, only a very short distance before it has to disappear, like the So you want a short-range force, just exchange a massive particle-- a long-reach force-- a massless particle. Everything works fine. But it doesn't, because this theory gives the best predictions in nature.
Planes, the moon, the sun, tides-- everything rings this machine. And the graviton, which is the particle analog or the particle complement to the gravitational wave, is massless , as far as we understand.