If photons are massless, how can they be redirected? How do they interact with the properties of a mirror for an example?
In: Physics
Photons interact with electromagnetic phenomena because they are electromagnetic radiation. However, given that they are massless, you wouldn’t expect them to react to gravity.
But they do. This is because gravity is not best understood as the Newtonian attraction proportional to mass and inversely proportional to distance, but the Einsteinian understanding that energy bends the fabric of reality. Large masses, such as stars, pull space itself towards them, dragging everything which passes through that space as well. Light still travels in a straight line through gravity wells, but the lines themselves aren’t straight because the material they are inscribed upon isn’t. In a very real sense, there is no such thing as a straight line at all.
Human brains aren’t built to imagine this properly. That makes sense, given our origins, but it unfortunately means that we find this objective fact about reality wierd and counterintuitive. The fact is that we’re the weird ones, for not being able to understand something true intuitively.
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