Light

Can light be bent by magnetic fields?

Originally posted by joe shmo
Can light be bent by magnetic fields?

Not AFAIK. Photons have no electric charge, so I don't think there is any way for a magnetic field to affect them. Gravitational fields, of course, do.

Richard

Originally posted by Shallow Blue
Not AFAIK. Photons have no electric charge, so I don't think there is any way for a magnetic field to affect them. Gravitational fields, of course, do.

Richard

meaning your not 100% sure?

Originally posted by joe shmo
meaning your not 100% sure?

Who knows? It's Quantum. As far as I now know, I can't see any way for it to happen, but weird things happen often in this field.

Richard

Are parallel rays of light parallel to infinite distances? (do photons attract each other because they each have gravity)

Also if you could design a huge long molecule (a polymer?) with charged areas on it which exactly matched the positive and negative oscillations of the photon's electric field what would happen if the photon passed close by?

The Faraday effect seems a bit related.. the direction in which light is polarized can be affected with a magnetic field. This doesn't change the direction of the beam of light though.

Physics forum discussions would seem to suggest that there is gravitational interaction between photons, and this has been used in modeling the timeline of when there was heaps of radiation.. that is, the first 50k years after the Big Bang.