rest mass being non zero means not massless

But regardless of what any theory might predict, it is still necessary to check this prediction by doing an experiment.

It is almost certainly impossible to do any experiment that would establish the photon rest mass to be exactly zero

and yea its mostly theoretics

^^^ meaning they cant test for it

If the rest mass were nonzero it's saying we'd run into issues with qed

you cant test most of the stuff with protons

photons

*

You can't test most of the stuff with cosmology

Or geology

so the idea is, as far as my non physics trained brain gets it, that it is zero all the time, but they need it to be nonzero at rest

yes you can?? @Fran especially geology

well thats a long story

cosmology not as much

Can you test the formation of million year old rock formations?

(get it? geology, long story?)

yes

how lol

carbon dating

what he meant is that u cant replicate it in the lab

you dont have to

Yeah I don't mean test to just observe some properties

can you recreate the formation of a grand canyon in a lab

well ure both right and wrong at the same time

with time yes

can you test the theory for it's formation

yes just not in one life time

lol if you think that is at all feesible

you can also 'test' supernovas then

Theoretically

one is far more possible

doesn't mean it's lab testable in any feasible way

there are many experiments that have taken more than one generation

in this kinda science, the scientific formula works like this: you dream up a hypotheses, you imagine the effects of that and then you see if the expected effects are a match for the real world.

is so, you were right, if not, u were rong

wrong

@inky the resources alone to recreate the formation of the grand canyon is absolutely insane

it's not just a matter of lifetimes

well duh, but you can scale it down

to what?

so you dont need to recreate the grand nothing in the lab