tempo Posted December 16, 2005 Share Posted December 16, 2005 I'm thinking in circles and would appreciate somebody's help. Firstly, is electromagnetic radiation matter? Secondly, would it make sense for a scientist to say that non-matter can interact with matter? Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xyph Posted December 16, 2005 Share Posted December 16, 2005 No, electromagnetic radiation is not matter, since it has no mass. If you're defining non-matter as "that which is not matter", then yes, it would make sense for a scientist to say that non-matter can interact with matter, since EM radiation definitely does interact with matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tempo Posted December 17, 2005 Author Share Posted December 17, 2005 No' date=' electromagnetic radiation is not matter, since it has no mass. If you're defining non-matter as "that which is not matter", then yes, it would make sense for a scientist to say that non-matter can interact with matter, since EM radiation definitely does interact with matter.[/quote'] i find the idea of non-matter really interesting... that something can exist without mass and without occupying space... makes me wonder about what it actually is... and all i can conclude is that it is a capacity to affect matter anyway thanks for your input Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Euclid Posted December 17, 2005 Share Posted December 17, 2005 i find the idea of non-matter really interesting... that something can exist without mass and without occupying space... makes me wonder about what it actually is... and all i can conclude is that it is a capacity to affect matter anyway thanks for your input Actualy, non-matter DOES use space, but has no mass, at least to my knowlege. A radio frequency has no mass, but its electro-magnetic waves do occupy space, cause even in a vacum they exist without affecting any matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin Posted December 17, 2005 Share Posted December 17, 2005 I'm thinking in circles and would appreciate somebody's help. Firstly' date=' is electromagnetic radiation matter? Secondly, would it make sense for a scientist to say that non-matter can interact with matter? Cheers[/quote'] tempo, just for breadth, have a look at this http://home.earthlink.net/~djmp/Wheeler.html John Archibald Wheeler was one of the foremost physicists of the second half of the 20th century. Incidentally he was Feynman's PhD thesis advisor, and later a co-author with Feynman. He also co-authored what is probably the best-known text on Gravitation (Misner, Thorne, Wheeler). One of Wheeler's favorite sayings was "Spacetime tells matter how to move. Matter tells spacetime how to curve." It is in his textbook, quoted by many authors, and all over the web. I urge keeping in mind the word's different meanings and what world-class physicists like Wheeler mean when they say MATTER in the context of GENERAL RELATIVITY. by contrast, for a more restricted definition of matter see the Wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter In that article they do not even include certain massive bosons as matter! they include only fermions. I think it is a poor article. electomagnetic radiation is one of the things which curve spacetime, and it is classified by physicists in Wheeler's branch of physics as matter. when cosmologists catalog all the different kinds of matter in the universe they include photons, in particular the cosmic microwave background photons. it is just what they do---it is their professional practice. they normally do not include dark energy, as matter. but they include photons. but particle physicists mean something different when they say "matter"---as one sees from the Wiki article they are even prone to exclude particles that have measurable amounts of mass. this sucks----physicists do not even agree about what the word "matter" means----can't blame lay people if they're occasionally confused. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rising moon Posted December 17, 2005 Share Posted December 17, 2005 isn it non matter is beyond physic? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Severian Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 Electromagnetic radiation is made up of photons, which are not classified as 'matter'. Whether something is 'matter' has nothing to do with whether or not it has mass. The photon has no mass, and is not matter, but the Z boson does have mass, and is not matter either. It just so happens that all matter particles we have observed do have mass, but even if the neutrinos had been found to be massless, they would still have been matter. And do answer the second question, all four forces are the interaction of matter with non-matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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