Science Forums 2

[maddog]

Interesting question... Two comments I can make: As others are seeing that a shadow is the absence
of light. These others have said, no. Yet light as defined by Maxwell's equations and quantized by QM
is actually massless particle. What is less than nothing ? Still nothing ( - 0 = 0 ).

Second the actual notion of mass is the local potential of the Higgs field near the particle and is not
intrinsic to it. As the Higgs particle used to express mass (or it's Higgs field) still has not been observed,
it is only currently conjectured to be the case.

Neither made use of extra dimensions as in string theories. Yet again you can think of Vacumm
fluctuations which are absence of everything and can still have an energy density. With mass/energy equivalence one could deduce an equivalent mass (some veeeerrrry small number). So any small
deviation from zero according Heisenberg Uncertainty would still be too small to measure with
accuracy, so might as well be zero (0). Hope this helps.

maddog