Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

In General Relativity, any momentum is encoded in the stress-energy tensor in the Einstein Field Equations, which relates curvature (mainly described by the Einstein tensor) and matter (mainly described by the stress-energy tensor). The vacuum of General Relativity has the stress-energy tensor filled with zeroes in all its components; a wave or beam of light introduces one or more nonzeroes. In suitable coordinates and the flat spacetime of special relativity, this is encoded in the "p" (p for momentum) in e.g. E^2 = (pc)^2 + (mc^2)^2, a fuller version of the famous E = mc^2. See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy%E2%80%93momentum_relati...> for details.

Alternatively, we can consider the active and passive gravitational charges of a given mass, also commonly called the active gravitational mass and the passive gravitational mass. The passive charge describes a mass's response to a known source of gravitation; the active charge describes the strength of the gravitational effects generated by an object. In General Relativity the version of the equivalence principle that says that all objects fall identically no matter what their internal composition is ("universality of free fall") ensures that the passive and active charges are identical for all matter. Moreover, in the approximately three hundred years before General Relativity was first written down, there were many successful tests of the equality of the active and passive gravitational charges for many masses; many of these tests were motivated by the work of Newton.

In both Newtonian gravity and General Relativity, light is deflected around large masses (e.g. light from distant stars, or radio beams from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MESSENGER> grazing the sun, and also lunar laser ranging experiments), so in both theories light has a passive gravitational charge (or passive gravitational mass). If passive and active gravitational charges are identical or at least totally equivalent, light must also source gravitation.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: