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I read that a photon is said to have zero mass at zero velocity.

Does this mean that they only exist in a state of probability until observed && interacting with some system? And then when observed they collapse into a particle that has velocity and said mass?

Or is it possible to have a photon behaving as a particle without mass?

This feels intuitively like the "wrong question", but could someone please explain to me how a photon, if it is energy, has no mass?

Are there any naturally occurring examples of photons without mass?

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    $\begingroup$ All photons are massless. Where did you read that nonsense about a "photon with zero velocity"? $\endgroup$
    – ACuriousMind
    Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 20:49

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I think there is some confusion here. Photons are always massless. They also always move at the speed of light. Therefore every example of a photon in nature has zero mass.

Perhaps you are thinking about a photon moving through a medium other than a vacuum. In this case, we can view the photon plus the interactions with the medium as a quasiparticle with a nonzero mass and a speed slightly less than the speed of light. But then we are no longer considering a true photon, so there is no contradiction with the first paragraph.

Edit: To answer your comment, in special relativity the energy of a particle is

$$E\equiv\gamma mc^2$$

where

$$\gamma \equiv \frac{1}{\sqrt{1-v^2/c^2}}$$

When we plug $v=c$ and $m=0$ into the formula for the energy, we find that $\gamma$ goes to $\infty$. Therefore, this expression for $E$ is an indeterminate form, so it should seem reasonable that any particle with zero mass moving at the speed of light can have a finite energy.

Perhaps a more useful formula for the energy in this situation is

$$E^2=p^2c^2+m^2c^4$$

where

$$p\equiv\gamma m v$$

is the definition of momentum in special relativity. You can derive this formula using the definitions of energy and momentum in special relativity. From this formula, you can see that the energy of a massless particle is finite and proportional to its momentum.

Perhaps some of your confusion results from trying to use the nonrelativistic formulas for energy and momentum to understand the behavior of highly relativistic light.

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  • $\begingroup$ How can something with energy have no mass? $\endgroup$
    – ruben_KAI
    Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 20:52
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    $\begingroup$ @RubenBaden - By moving at the speed of light. Massless particles always move at the speed of light. And they have non-zero energy. And non-zero momentum. Welcome to the weird world of relativity. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 20:56
  • $\begingroup$ so it takes an infinite amount of energy to move something with mass infinity close to the speed of light, but once something is at the speed of light it has no mass? are there other particles that move at the speed of light without any mass? $\endgroup$
    – ruben_KAI
    Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 21:00
  • $\begingroup$ Look at the definition of energy provided above. That should convince you that only massless particles can move at the speed of light with finite energy. $\endgroup$
    – Ian
    Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 21:11
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    $\begingroup$ If you want to get philosophical, what do you mean by energy then? If you want to talk about energy you necessarily have to refer its definition. $\endgroup$
    – Ian
    Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 21:30

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