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Would it violate any special laws, if someone were to change the axiom of SR that

"Speed of light in vacuum is the same with respect to all reference frames"

To

"Speed of light in vacuum is the same with respect to all reference frames, but it's own reference frame, where it is the minimum".

I can then assign the photon a rest mass. Of course, it will get a reference frame as well. With no direction, time or speed. I mean if I got in the concept of 0 here, then it would be possible to assign the photon a rest mass, and say that the photon exhibits both these traits. Mass and EM wave both.

The mass trait not part of an EM field.

Could factor in the extra mass in the universe, and can be checked using calculations as well I guess?

novice
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1 Answers1

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The real reason we can't assign the photon a fundamental mass is because the straightforward mass term would break the gauge symmetry on which the electromagnetic theory is based. Now, that isn't to say that it is impossible to give such a gauge particle mass, we do it to the weak force using the Higgs mechanism. I'm not sure how possible it would be to apply such a mechanism to electromagnetism, though, especially since it's a massless particle leftover from applying the process to the unbroken electroweak theory.

That said, we have very stringent observational constraints on how massive photons could be, so I find it very unlikely that we will eventually find that it has a mass.

Sean E. Lake
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