question archive Light was considered to be a vibration until it was discovered to have, under certain circumstances, a corpuscular mass
Light was considered to be a vibration until it was discovered to have, under certain circumstances, a corpuscular mass
Subject:PhysicsPrice: Bought3
Light was considered to be a vibration until it was discovered to have, under certain circumstances, a corpuscular mass.
The wave nature of light had been known for a long time (since Maxwell and Hertz 1880s) when in 1926 a paper on Nature revealed the existence of photons.
Subsequent studies revealed that photons had mass. The interesting part is that light can be either, a wave or a corpuscle; but not simultaneously.
Light travels at the velocity of 300 000 km/sec in void. It slows considerably going through different media.
A velocity higher than the velocity of light cannot exist, nor can be measured, in nature. This opens the possibility to a number of paradoxes. For instance, two objects running towards each other, each at the velocity of light, would approach each other at the velocity of light.
