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Photons and Gravity

Photons and gravity seem to have a lot in common since they have no mass and can travel at the speed of light. However, light travels from a point in all directions while gravity travels in all directions to a point.

We have often heard physicists say, “nothing can ever attain the speed of light.” What they are talking about are things that have mass. Photons and gravity can do this because they are not material objects and have a mass of zero. They sometimes seem to exist in a strange world of their own where there is no space or duration of time, just the “Now.”

As a youngster I heard that Max Planck had said that light comes in tiny bundles or quanta and it seemed to me I should somehow be able to capture it in a container. In the song, “Swinging on a Star” Bing Crosby asked if I would like to “carry moonbeams home in a jar.” I tried this, but alas, to no avail.

Newton thought the force of gravity was instantaneous; that the force of gravity from the earth directed toward the suns position was “Now.” What he didn’t know was that gravity travels at the speed of light and that the sun was 500 light seconds from the earth so instead of “Now” its position was 500 seconds ago. But putting a 500-second delay into the Newtonian gravity would make the planets orbits unstable. Oh! Oh!

Einstein and General Relativity to the rescue! In General Relativity this, so called force does not point directly to the source of the gravitational field but depends on both velocity and position. So this cancels out the 500-second delay and we are back to the Newtonian result. Wow, I bet I had you worried there for a moment.

What light really is we probably will never know? We don’t actually even see it; we just experience it from our minds translating it into a visual image. The photons of light have no antiparticle, so in light's world, there is no dualism. Light can figure out the quickest way through layers of clouds of different densities. It will choose to avoid the denser medium and choose instead the rarer medium even though this may not be the shortest path, just the quickest. Max Planck commented on this phenomenon: “Thus the photons, which constitute a ray of light, behave like intelligent human beings: Out of all possible curves they always select the one that that takes them most quickly to their goal.” This law formulated by Liebniz is known as the principle of least action.

Gravity appears to bend light, but we really don’t know what causes gravity or where it comes from and its too weak to measure in the lab. Physicists have postulated Gravitons and hope to someday capture one “in a jar.” This is the fervent hope of those who are working with string theory, quantum gravity. They hope it will flesh out their Theory of Everything,” (TOE.)
As it becomes apparent to more and more physicists that some form of panpsychism is involved in the mysteries of quantum physics, it may be necessary to add Consciousness or Mind to their equations to solve such problems as gravity, non-locality and the Theory of Everything.