How do solar sails work if photons don’t have mass?
In: Physics
I actually looked this up the other day and summarized what I read to my friend:
Despite that they have no mass, the equation of their energy instead uses λ which is the wavelength, and shorter wavelengths carry more momentum.
In everyday applications this energy is negligible to a person overall, like even high frequency photons like X-Rays are not going to truly affect a macro object like a person.
But if you take the λ value to it’s logical extreme and assume “minimal wavelength” as the shortest wavelength possible, or the theoretical minimum, the Planck length, a single photon would have I N S A N E energy. A human being struck by a photon with a λ equal to the Planck length would result in immediate vaporization. The energy involved is many orders of magnitude higher than what is needed to instantly vaporize any material, including human tissue.
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