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Originally Posted by JustDisGuy
I envy your understanding, and thank you for your responses.
Unfortunately, I cannot discourse on the subject on a par with the rest of you, so I'll resume lurker mode here. It is indeed a most enjoyable thread though.
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Perhaps an easier explanation of the whole light's momentum thing to understand would be thus:
Light actually does have mass, it just doesn't have rest mass. Particles with 0 rest mass can still have a relativistic mass if, and only if, they are travelling at c. Having this relativistic mass allows it to have an impart (relativisitic) momentum upon the solar sails.
This explanation is somewhat discouraged though as the concept of relativistic mass has been obsoleted because it isn't an invariant property under frame changes.