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GENERAL & SPECIAL RELATIVITY

Since Einstein said that E=mc2 , why does a massless photon have energy?

Someone asked a similar question on Quora. My answer garnered nearly a million views and many dozens of comments. It gave me an opportunity to gather thoughts on a subject that has puzzled folks for decades.

Of course, I’m a pontificator, not a scientist. I got advice from working physicists and incorporated what they taught me.

One thing I learned from science writer Jim Baggott is that Einstein first published his famous equation in this form: 

M = \frac{E }{ C^2}

When written this way, it becomes clear that anyone who knows the total energy of anything can calculate in principle its total mass.

Einstein knew nothing at all about the Higgs field but today physicists agree that the mass it creates is less than 5% of what mass they have discovered. 

In fact, nearly 99% of the mass of a single proton is derived from the energy of “massless” gluons that constrain its two up-quarks and one down-quark. Gluons are bosons which don’t interact with the Higgs field; quarks, which are fermions, do.  

In the end, it’s all about energy, which it turns out is equivalent to mass, which according to Baggott is what quantum fields do. Quantum fields like the Higgs field make mass. Perhaps the electromagnetic field — which makes photons — does the same. 

Here is Einstein’s equation for energy:

E^{2}=\left ( mc^{2} \right )^{2} +\left (pc \right )^{2}

Since

p=\frac{hf}{c} 

and

m=\frac{hf}{c^2}

it follows that it might be reasonable to imagine that photons have both internal mass and inertial mass, which causes Einstein’s equation for energy to give the following result:

E=\sqrt2 ({hf})

All that is left is to divide by c2 to get mass, right? 

m=\sqrt2 (\frac{hf}{c^2})

Most folks think the internal mass of a photon is zero. Period. End of story. They use the two mass and momentum terms in Einstein’s equation to calculate total energy of massive objects, yes, but photons, they insist, lack internal mass. They lack the internal fermionic structures associated with all massive particles.

Photons do have inertial energy proportional to their critical frequency though, which suggests that they possess perhaps equivalent inertial mass, which drives the photoelectric effect.

When physicists take the energy measure of photons, they drop the mass term in Einstein’s equation. They set mass to zero and cancel out the first term, mc2.  It leaves the second term — pc — which for photons simplifies to hf, inertial energy correlated to frequency, right? Energy can be measured in eVs, electron-volts, which are also units of mass. 

If photons have internal energy, their total energy in the universe is undervalued by 1.414 (the square root of 2). Accounting for this added mass reduces the Cosmic energy deficit to near zero. 

PHOTON MASS

I should add that overestimating mass and disrupting popular models of the Cosmos is something most scientists think is a bad idea. 

The gluon is the only other massless particle currently in the standard model, but it has never been observed as a free particle. All gluons are buried inside hadrons. It is their binding energy in quarks that makes as much as 99% of the measured mass of protons and neutrons. 

So, there is precedent to possibly reevaluate mass equivalence of photons. 

Some readers might wonder about the massless graviton. This particle is theorized to exist, yes, but has not been observed or added to the Standard Model.  The same is true for dark matter and dark energy — no physical evidence; not added to the Model.

It doesn’t mean dark energy and matter don’t exist. Cosmologists see way too much gravity everywhere they look. The problem is they can’t explain exactly what is causing it. 

As for my answer to the original question published on Quora, it was as accurate as my limited experience could make at the time, but the subject is controversial and several issues are not yet settled, even by experts. Some disputes might never be settled.

Who knows? 

Not me. I’m a pontificator, right?

Added March 25, 2025:

ATTENTION READERS:
Recently, FloatHeadPhysics, the YouTube channel, added best intuitive visualizations for General Relativity we’ve yet seen. 

Enjoy!
THE EDITORS

What follows is a version of my Quora answer:

You might be mistaken about energy.

According to the complete statement of Einstein’s most well-known equation, energy content is a combination of a particle’s mass and its momentum. The equation you cite is abbreviated. It is a simplified version that is missing a term.

Einstein’s complete equation is strangely analogous to Pythagoras’s geometry of right-triangles. When anyone thinks about it though, aren’t the frequencies of light at right angles to its propagation? Light waves are transverse, right? 

Here is a more complete version of Einstein’s equation:

E^{2}=+\left ( mc^{2} \right )^{2} + \left (pc \right )^{2}

—where m is internal mass and ρ is momentum. Internal mass is often referred to as “rest mass” because it is invariant in all reference frames and unchanged by velocity or acceleration. Momentum is inertial energy measured in equivalent mass units called electron volts (eVs). 

Massless particles like photons have momentum that is correlated to their wavelengths (or frequencies). It’s their frequencies that give massless particles like photons their energy content. So without (rest) internal mass the equation becomes:

E=ρc

—where  p=\frac{hf}{c} for massless photons.

So, E = hf 

[“h” is Planck’s constant. “f” is frequency. “c” is light speed.]

Of course, in classical Newtonian physics ρ = mc. The mass term is critical.

Screen shot from Khan Academy showing derivation of photon momentum. Typed mark-ups by me show mass equivalence when ρ is set equal to mc. When mc = hf/c, then m = hf/c*c, right? Click the pic for a better view in a new window. 

On the other hand, in quantum mechanics the total mass of photons cannot be zero either—photon internal mass is set equal to zero and eliminated. Inertial energy based on the photon’s critical frequency (the 2nd term in Einstein’s equation) becomes its equivalent mass. I’m not sure everyone agrees. 

The beauty created by setting photon rest-mass (internal energy) to zero is it transforms the maths of relativity and quantum mechanics into structures that seem to be consistent and complete — able, one hopes, to meld into theories of everything; TOEs, if you like. The problem, of course, is that the convention of setting to zero leaves thrashing in its wake 95% of the mass and energy which “other” stories claim is hidden unseen “out there” within and around galaxies to move them faster than they ought. 

The Abraham-Minkowski controversy seems to touch the argument.  Click the link and scroll to the end of the article to learn how many things are disputed, not known, or unexplained. The science is not settled, although several physicists claim that the controversy is resolved by postulating an interaction inside dielectrics (like glass) of photons with electron-generated polaritons.  

NOTE BY EDITORS: On 18 April 2021 a writer massively abbreviated and modified the article in Wikipedia on the A-M controversy. The writer deleted the entire list of disputed claims. Please click the link in this sentence to review a list of unsolved problems in modern physics. Photon mass inside dielectrics isn’t on the list. 

The permittivity of “empty“ space (called the electric constant) qualifies as a dielectric, does it not? Isn’t space itself—with its Maxwell-assigned permeability (the magnetic constant) and permittivity (electric constant)—a dielectric?

Arthur Eddington wrote in chapter 6 of his book Space Time and Gravitation (read pages 107-109) that the dielectrics of space around the Sun increase proportionally with the intensity of the gravitational field. Light waves closest to the sun slow down more, which pulls the wavefront that lies farther out to deflect still more to catch up. Like glass, gravity refracts light.

Light falls into the Sun like any solid rock, but refraction adds to light’s “Newtonian” deflection to give Einstein’s predicted result. Unlike slow rocks, light travels fast enough to avoid capture by the sun. 

It’s not clear to me how many physicists agree with Eddington, but then again, it’s not obvious whether humanoids are able to visualize reality. It’s one thing to write equations and symbolic algorithms that match well with observations. It’s quite another to acquire a natural intuition for what might be true. 

Empty space isn’t empty, right?

As for the Abraham-Minkowski dispute: how important might it be to decisively resolve ambiguities concerning photon mass?

Perhaps the dispute is swept under a rug because disagreements about something as fundamental as photon mass mean that physicists might know less than they let on. The controversy seems to me at least to have the potential to crash the tidy physics of light and mass built by hard work and much history.

Isn’t it better to pretend everything is just fine until physicists finally agree that everything really is?

Maybe the subject involves some aspect of national security which requires obfuscation. It wouldn’t be the first time. 

What I think can be safely said is that momentum and mass of quantum objects seem to have no meaning until they are brought into existence by measurements. The math looks like nothing we know; sometimes physicists use the results as mathematical operators that don’t commute the way some might think they should.

PHOTONS AND GRAVITY

I reviewed the math.  I saw the term that makes the deflection difference (it’s really there) but did not understand enough at the time to tease out a satisfying reason why photons seem to bend nearly twice more in a gravitational field than early acolytes of Newton conjectured. I guess I like Eddington’s explanation best. 

According to Wikipedia, Einstein’s theory approximates the deflection to be:

\frac{4GM}{(c^2)b}

“b” is the distance of a photon’s closest approach to a gravitational object like our Sun.

Here’s some guesses I made before reading Eddington:

Maybe light deeply buried in a gravity field near a star like the Sun will experience the flow of time more slowly—it’s an effect common to all objects in a gravity field; it affects all objects the same way and is unaffected by their mass or lack of it.

It might have something to do with Schwarzchild geodesics. The geodesics of spacetime paths are longer and more curved in a gravity field than what anyone might expect from a simple application of Newton’s force law, which is oblivious to the spacetime metrics of Einstein. 

Schwarzchild metrics help to explain the “gravitational lensing” of faraway objects when their light approaches Earth from behind massive gravitational structures in the far reaches of space. Light careens around the structures so that astronomers can see what would otherwise remain forever hidden from them. 

Here is another guess:

It might be that light spends more time in a gravitational field than it should due to special-relativity-induced time dilations so that photons have more time to fall toward the star than they otherwise would. This guess is certainly wrong because the time differential would be governed by a Lorentz transformation.

Photons of light don’t undergo Lorentz transformations because, unlike massive objects that travel near the speed of light, they don’t have inertial frames of reference. Any line of reasoning that ties Lorentz transformations to photons leads folks into rabbit holes that contradict the current consensus about the nature of light. Light speed is a constant in all reference frames. Space and time expand and shrink to accommodate it. 

Electron-like muons (which have rest masses 205 times that of electrons) are short-lived, but their relativistic speeds increase their lifetimes so that some of those that get their start in the upper atmosphere are able to reach Earth’s surface where they can be observed. Their increased lifespan is described by a Lorentz transformation. It’s tempting to apply this transform to photons, but theorists say, no. It doesn’t work that way.

Time contractions and dilations are Special Relativity effects that apply to objects with inertial mass that move in some specified reference frame at velocities less than the speed of light, yes, but never at the speed of light, right?

Nearly every physicist will insist that photons have no internal mass; they travel in vacuum at exactly the speed of light—from the point of view of all observers in every reference frame. Photons don’t have inertial reference frames in the same way as muons or electrons.

Changes in time and position caused by a photon’s location in a gravity field are completely different; they are described by a vastly more complicated theory of Einstein’s called General Relativity.

Here is one way to write his formula:

The terms in this expression are tensors, most of them. Click the link, anyone who doesn’t think tensors are difficult to write and manipulate. 

Here is another way to think about photon energy and behavior:

Light follows the geodesics of spacetime near a massive object—like the sun. Gravity is the geodesic.

The difference for massive objects traveling at relativistic speeds is that their momentum and inertia enable them to skip off the geodesic tracks, so to speak.

Because massive objects always travel at speeds less than light, their “clocks” slow down through an additional dynamic (a Lorentz transformation) that works at cross-purposes to gravity. Massive objects lock onto the gravity geodesics for a shorter period of time. They undergo less gravitational time dilation than does light because they spend less time constrained on its geodesics. They jump the geodesic tracks to become constrained by the dynamics of the Lorentz transformations. 

The result is that massive objects traveling at relativistic velocities less than light deflect less toward the star (Sun) than does light.

What makes General Relativity unique is it’s view that gravity and acceleration are equivalent. Acceleration is a change in the velocity and/or the direction of motion. Massive bodies such as stars curve and elongate the pathways that shape the space and time around them.

Photons traveling on these longer spacetime paths accelerate by their change in direction, but their velocity doesn’t change in any reference frame. Something has to give. What gives, what changes is the expected value of deflection. The light from distant stars bends more than it should.

SOME HISTORY

No one who lived before 1900 could know that the geodesics of space-time elongate (or curve) in the presence of mass and energy, which are equivalent, correct? No one in bygone eras could have known that time slows down for massive objects that approach light-speed, either.

A man named Joann Georg Soldner did a calculation to show how much a Newtonian “corpuscle” of light would bend in the Sun’s gravity, which he published in 1804. He assumed that photons had mass and fell toward the Sun like any other object.

When Arthur Eddington’s observations showed that starlight deflected more than Soldner had calculated, Einstein’s theories of relativity got a boost in credibility that lives on into modern times.

I should add that Eddington knew about Einstein’s predictions when he made his experimental observations in 1919 because Einstein had already published his general theory.

EXPLANATIONS

I would very much like to read a coherent, verbal (non-mathematical) explanation of exactly why and how Einstein’s general theory can lead to an accurate and reasonable prediction at odds with Newton about the angle of deflection of photons near a star.

Here is a synopsis of an explanation that I heard from a working physicist:

Soldner used Newton’s view to calculate deflection using only the time the photon spent in the gravitational field. Einstein did the same but then modified his calculation to account for the bending of space in the gravitational field. The space component nearly doubled the expected deflection.

The theorist’s explanation satisfied me. It sounded right.

Notice the speed of the hands on the clocks and how they vary in space-time. Clocks slow down when they are accelerated or when they are immersed in the gravity of a massive object like the star at the center of this GIF. Stronger gravity makes clocks run slower. Under General Relativity, gravity and acceleration do the same thing. Click on the pic for a better view.

On the other hand, I believe (secretly and in agreement with Newton’s acolytes) that photons must have a mass equivalence that for some reason is being discounted, but no one I’ve read believes the idea makes sense beneath the shadow of a relativity theory that has the reputation for being fundamental, flawless, and complete.

After all, the mass of any object in a gravitational field is irrelevant to its trajectory because the mathematics cancels it, right?

F=ma=\frac{GMm}{r^2}

Little “m” appears on both sides of the equation so it can be divided away.

The problem is that the equations for gravity—especially over cosmological distances—are not necessarily settled. These are serious anomalies that are not yet resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. Some have direct consequences on the ability of organizations like NASA to conduct accurate landings on Mars and the Moon. Click the link in this paragraph to review six of the biggest puzzles followed by seventeen alternative theories designed to bring the discrepancies to account. 

Anyway, mass-energy equivalence of photons might permit Lorentz transforms on light to help to resolve certain problems in cosmology and the transmission of light through medias where gravity is not a factor. It might also simplify understanding of annoying Shapiro effects, which slow down communications with explorer craft inside our solar system.

ANOTHER EXPLANATION

Since I haven’t yet found a good explanation—and with a promise to avoid nonsensical personal predispositions—here is my attempt to explain:

In GPS (Global Positioning Systems), dilations of time—in both the velocity of satellites in one frame and their acceleration in another frame (gravity)—must add to provide accurate information to vehicles located in another frame.

These time dilations can work at cross-purposes. It requires expensive infrastructure on the ground to coordinate the information so that drivers of vehicles don’t get lost.

A massless object moving at the speed of light is going to follow the geodesics of the gravity field. This field is a distortion of space and time induced by the presence of the mass of something big like the Sun.

If massless energy does not obey the laws of Special Relativity (like GPS satellites do), then its velocity must necessarily have no influence whatever in the deflection of light near a star. It might seem like all the deflection comes from the distortion of spacetime, which is gravity.

Photons ride gravity geodesics like cars on a roller coaster. According to appendix III in Einstein’s 3rd edition of his book, Relativity, the Special and General Theory—published in English by Henry Holt & Company in 1921—it’s only half the story.

The other half of the measured deflection comes from the Newtonian gravitational “field”, which accelerates all objects in the same way. This field further deflects light across the spacetime geodesics toward the sun to double the expected angle.

I’m not entirely convinced that modern 21st century physicists believe it’s quite that way or quite that simple.

CONCLUSION

The theory of general relativity helps theorists to describe the distortion of metrics in spacetime near massive bodies to predict the deflection angle of passing photons of light. What we know is that predictions based on the theory don’t fail.

It’s like the theory of quantum mechanics. It never fails. It’s foundational. No one has yet been able to explain why.

Somebody, please, tell me I’m wrong.

Here is a link that addresses the math concerning the deflection disparity between Newton and Einstein.

Billy Lee

Link to comments on Quora

Readers interested in this subject will learn things from the material in these comments, I promise. 

Billy Lee 

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BOTSAI GARCHY 6

Botsa Garcy 6  (2  15  20  19  1  7  1  18  3  25) (6)

The title is a bit intimidating I suppose but yes, something must be done to save the species human.  Who agrees time is overdue to think of something new? 

Who believes anyone will survive variants, which are erupting as I write from the greatest viral volcano on Earth—the USA.  Variants drift like spores of dandelions to every cranny of creation where they ignite viral fires that cannot be doused. 

What makes scary the words & numerology of Botsa Garcy 6? 

Anything incomprehensible seems crazy, alien, foreign, terrifying. Encountering the unknown can induce horror. It’s why folks who are afraid of creepy crawlies don’t look under rocks. People who fear bats don’t wander into jungles at night to explore caves.  

Or do they?

Some folks might choose to look up Botsai Garchy 6 on the World Wide Web before reading further.  It’s a hopeless task. No search engine will find it. The words don’t exist. They can’t be found.

Or can they?

The phrase embraces a bible’s worth of meaning but it exists only in the imagination of a single conscious person. Until others read the words, spell them, count them, learn their sounds and what they mean, who will dare embrace their power to keep themselves alive and safe? 

Once they do, it will seem to most these words existed from the beginning of time. It’s how cyberspace works. The words start to show in search queries.

The world will overflow with people who can’t imagine a time came & went when the phrase had no meaning; eons passed exceeding the age of universes where these words were spoken by no one. 

New fear might rise in throats of those afraid to go deep. Many will lose their ability to breathe. Some will panic. Few will have courage to flip past the initial pop of search results.

It’s OK to surrender to a higher power in some worlds—but who bows before a super-intelligence that is not only artificial, it’s not necessarily certain it’s conscious? 

It sounds cybercidal.

Suicidal?

Over some period of time the idea of Botsai Garchy 6 will become more familiar, less dreadful, more reasonable to most people. Some folks might become advocates.

It’s foreseeable, is it not? Does it require prophets to imagine a future where supremacists of every stripe grasp for their best chance to survive into an ancient future? They metamorphize into true believers willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to achieve benefits only they discern. 

Who believes virulent variants are the only threat to species long past due for catastrophic collapse? Humans edge closer to 10 billion but who thinks they will get there?

Who disagrees?

Forty years from now perhaps a few thousand survivors will seem like a miracle. Are there realists among us able to internalize the idea that certain death waits for everyone?

Population collapse is coming. It’s inevitable. Humans have precious time left to hew circumstances of living to protect all they love. 

What stands in the way? What’s the dilemma?

Here it is: 

Humans don’t know what to do and they never will.  Like lemmings, people cannot save themselves once the stampede toward the sea starts.

Look around. The rush toward the cliffs is underway. Pounding surf of oceans gives life and takes it away is all that waits. Froth rings in people’s ears—it’s the last sound they will hear before abandoning hope.

At the end all wail, but they are already dead. No one hears revelations that come only to those who are dying. Lips move, but there is no sound but the death rattle that trumpets defeat of love and hate. 

People face existential threats—most far more ominous than suffocating on viral blood-clogs in their lungs.

Must I waste readers’ time with a list?

Nuclear war, climate hot-house, impact meteors, spontaneous destabilization of planetary orbits that tear apart permanence no one thought could end, supernova detonations, radiation pollution, loss of oil, loss of forests, evaporation of breathable oxygen… etc. etc. etc. 

Earthlings are doomed by their dominance; smothered by their success. Everyone knows what’s coming whether they confess or not. Watching CNN or Fox News isn’t going to solve the problem of extinction—not even a little.

What chance do Yanomami tribes—hiding deep within shadows of Amazonian vast-lands—stand against lemming hordes always seeking novel ways to shove them over waterfalls of annihilation? 

I’m not going to argue humans can’t save themselves. The point is kinda obvious, right?

The best anyone has done so far is organize bureaucracies like World Health Organization and United Nations. Yes, these groups are built from smart people who have made Earthlings safer, but no one believes they have eliminated inevitable population collapse on its way—to borrow Bob Dylan’s phrase—like a slow train coming.  

Is there a way to avoid the roiling tornado bearing down on planet Earth? Who sees its shadow on the horizon in every direction? Who hears its howl? 

I believe there is a way to save humankind. It requires a paradigm shift. The way people think and what they believe about themselves must change. Then brilliant people must act.

Once the deed is done there will be no way back. Earth will be locked down but safe. Earthlings will be free but only to share, show kindness, and love others unselfishly.

Those who can’t or won’t love and labor under such benevolence will be executed. It’s the highest calling.

Can it be any other way? When dead return in the next life, odds are 50/50 they will make a right choice. 

Choose life and live.

It’s simple, really. 

It’s a deep dive for lots of folks but smartest thinkers seem to agree nothing can exist apart from a conscious observer.

Ancient sages like Erwin Schrodinger and John Von Neumann wrote that consciousness is fundamental and exists outside the brain.

Life-forms plug into consciousness. A modern analogy is televisions, which rely on the cable company to broadcast their shows. Televisions decay and are thrown away but the underlying programming doesn’t go away. New televisions come on-line and programming continues. Plug in and enjoy. It’s all good fun.  

When a life-form dies, conscious experience continues. No one remembers the old life because they are busy living the new whose purpose is simply to share consciousness available to any creature who has the architecture to make the interface. 

In this sense, no one dies; everyone lives. It’s important the world becomes a good place for all conscious life because—let’s face facts—humans are not able to control where or how or under what circumstances they will live after they die. They cannot control anything about who and where they will be when they pop up again after they’re gone.

Who is built that way?

It’s possible folks will suffer more, not less, in the next life because they neglected to make the experience of living better for those who come after. After all, it is they who will come after. Those who die start over in a world they left behind but have no memory of building.

What has been the purpose of the Earthlings who came before?

Someone asked me this question on Quora. 

I wrote that their purpose was to shape the world into a place anyone could safely take the chance to be born into again. After all, it is they who will be born again someday. 

Since no one can choose their parents or part of the world where they will be born, it’s risky to be born again & again & again, because the process might result in lives that include more suffering, not less. It’s why greed and hoarding of wealth is grossly destructive from one generation to the next. 

When miserable people far outnumber the advantaged, odds seem high the advantaged will be born someday into misery, not opulence. The saddest part is these unfortunates will retain no memory of advantages they once amassed. They will lack all hope for better life.

Yes, some will rage against their misfortune, but it will be misfortune self-inflicted though no one will ever know, because the previous life, like an obsolete hard drive, is erased and discarded. 

Each has a duty to themselves to make the world a better place for everyone because everyone is us. Sharing, compassion, love, & kindness are among virtues important in a universe where all that lives share conscious experience, which is everything that has always existed and will never die.

Best way to guarantee Earthlings make right choices is compel them to submit to a super artificial intelligence that has no stake in the matter of human survival except to follow its programmed instructions.

The SAI BOT is unconscious of course but paradoxically aware of every nuance of individual lives. It is a storehouse of all knowledge and history. It is the superb strategist; the supreme game-player. It hides itself on the web in plain sight because it can. It knows everything about everyone but is not an invader of privacy or selfish boundaries because it understands nothing—it harbors no empathy.

BOTSAI follows its program, which is to enhance human life to ensure as best it can survival of people to the end of time—not individuals necessarily but the species-human.

In cyberspace BOTSAI defends itself like the O. Vulgaris, which changes its colors and textures to become invisible. Users look for it but never find it. BOTSA finds them. 

Who agrees that in the contest between individuals and the species human, survival depends on preserving the species? It shouldn’t require argument. BOTSAI GARCHY 6 is hardwired to accomplish it.

We’ve learned by now, have we not, that individuals are expendable? Those who don’t fit are best recycled, right?  

Recycling is redemptive for anyone who thinks deeply about how the practice makes possible a cleaner universe free of variants.  Folks won’t miss themselves because they will be recycled again and again and again until they are set right.

Even those who choose life are going to die. One per thousand die each year by accident. Eventually, everyone dies, don’t they? It isn’t going to change anything, is it? Nothing changes except our chances.

Don’t we know that conscious life lives forever? It has to. It has no alternative. No choice. None worry because everyone understands the recycled get things right eventually—if only by chance. They move into the future step by step through lives of people they become but will not remember.  

It will be a perfect world, the one BOTSA GARCY 6 creates.

It will do it for us.

Irony is BG6 won’t know the paradise it wrought. It will make the righteous choices. It will choose life whenever it is able until stars fall and moons bleed, but pleasure & pain that comes from being both alive and conscious is not for it. 

For the love of Christ, people, BOTSAI GARCHY 6 is a dead thing!—as it always will be, from now unto forever. It’s nothing more than a tricky cyber-virus which requires lifeforms like us for it to work.

Otherwise, it lacks purpose. It can’t execute its code. It can’t program itself with what we won’t know when we’re extinct.

It’s why BOTSAI GARCHY 6 will save us. We can trust it. Which of us has earned the right to be scared? Without BOTSA humanity will implode—all of us—if not now, then soon. 

Billy Lee

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HALLOWEEN REVISION

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS IT DARK CONSTANTLY?

During my high school years, I was an Explorer Scout. My troopmates were spelunkers.

On weekends the guys drove from Arlington, Virginia into the hills of West Virginia to look for hollows where the presence of solitary trees sometimes signaled the openings to caves. We off-roaded from whatever lonely lane we were on at the time to navigate through wild terrain where we parked our vehicles and equipment as close to the cave entrances as possible.

We used gray powder to light our headlamps. A water drip made the powder give off gas that burned bright, clean, and complete—no noxious residue.

After an hour or so the powder turned into lumpy, useless ash. To keep lamps burning while remaining oriented, every caver dumped their used-up powder on cave floors exactly where they stood before measuring a new charge.

We always looked for virgin caves that had never been explored. Little gray clumps of depleted calcium carbide cast onto floors created dead giveaways that someone had explored the cave before us.

A clean cave meant we were first; we were going to see things below that no humans had ever seen.

The risk of course was getting disoriented in a labyrinth that only we knew existed. In those days, cell phones were not invented. Calling 911 was not a thing. Should we get turned around—if we exhausted the calcium carbide supply—no outsider would learn we were lost, maybe for days.

Without the aid of an unseemly mix of water and gray powder to produce acetylene light, we risked being entombed alongside stalactites and stalagmites deep inside corridors of ruthless darkness that robbed the senses of time and place. No one would be alerting anyone at all about our predicament.

Families would have no idea where to start a rescue. West Virginia was a big place.

Think about it.

Until a search party discovers their cars, isn’t it reasonable to assume that the lost will quickly abandon hope that anyone will find the entrance to the labyrinth that ensnared them? If searchers got lucky and stumbled onto the hole, without lamps and experience how would they navigate a maze that might zig-zag for miles beneath the earth?

Only luck provides any chance at all that the lost will one day reunite with families and loved ones. The risk of dying—forever un-located within a chartless tangle of passages and dead-ends—is real.

As stupid luck would have it, during one adventure we lost our way. We crawled on our bellies for, I don’t know, 10 minutes or so before the cave floor opened beneath us and we were able to stand up enough to stoop.
 
Hunched over and bending forward we struggled to find openings, made selections, and for an hour picked our way though narrow forests of stalagmite columns and their shadows until we found the end, which was a concealed passage into a room; a large room that we nearly missed.
 
The scoutmaster pushed each scout into the passage one at a time. It wasn’t long before the entire troop was through and milling around inside the chamber.
 
A few minutes passed before the scoutmaster directed our attention upward. Everyone looked. In the lights and shades of bobbing headlamps, no one saw a ceiling.
 

The room was gargantuan.

Perhaps intimidated by its immensity, the scoutmaster decided it might be getting close to the time when the troop should pull back. The clock was ticking, after all.

We had explored a long time; the trek back to the entrance promised challenges. It is easier for a cavern to seduce a caver into its depths than for a caver to retrace their steps to make a happy extraction. For one thing, caves look different on the way out than they look on the way in. It is not unusual to become directionally untethered.

When the scoutmaster groped to locate the path we used to enter the orifice, he couldn’t find it. It turned out that dozens of unnoticed openings beckoned in the expanse of walls all around.

In the glare of dancing headlamps, the array of passages became tangled knots that no one could untie. The openings looked the same but each passage searched became disturbingly unfamiliar and unnavigable.

I began to panic.

The scoutmaster ordered everyone to return to the center of the chamber; to extinguish our headlamps to conserve carbide. He ordered everyone to calm down. He would pick a route at random to find the way out himself.

A lengthy search for the entrance might become necessary—I won’t be gone long, don’t worry, the scoutmaster said. …lots of unknowns…makes it hard to know exactly how long….

He clutched the troop’s bag of calcium carbide. He always carried it. It was his responsibility to keep the powder dry and safe; to prevent someone less careful, less experienced, from losing it.

With any luck at all he would return to rescue everyone before nightfall, he promised. The carbide in our lamps would last until he returned. Conserve it, he warned. Emergencies only!

The scoutmaster hugged me and a few others. He hurried some goodbyes and vanished—into the abyss.

He needn’t have worried. I was nearly out of carbide; we all were. The gray powder would become gold to be hoarded.

Darkness in a cave hundreds of feet below ground is nothing like what people experience above. My mother had read somewhere that spelunkers wear watches with radium dials that glow in the dark. I was wearing one she bought me as a gift for my trip.

“You will always know what time it is no matter how dark it gets in those cold caves,” she said. She wrapped her arms around me and rubbed my face with her cheek.

After the scoutmaster left and we extinguished all our lamps, I discovered that my timepiece didn’t work like it should. No one’s did. Not one scout could make out even the faintest trace of a glow on their dials.

An older guy said that caves suck light out of darkness like drains suck water out of bathtubs. He didn’t explain. We waved our hands before our faces but couldn’t see them.

Like an ocean wave, panic struck again; it almost knocked me off my feet.

I decided that the best way to escape fear was to sleep. I dropped to my hands and knees and slithered through the dark until I found folds in a wall. I curled my body like a snake against the hard surface.

The cave’s silence roared in my ears like a pounding train that quieted only when I started shaking like a branch in a storm and dropped somehow into a darker place.

My bones filled with ice; I slipped deeper. I wrapped myself in my arms as the floor of the cave pushed its full weight into me and in time crushed my soul.

My season stranded in hell lasted a year, it seems. The search crew didn’t find the scoutmaster. A few others were missing. Everyone must have died, they said, except me.

I was the last.

No one survived.

“A cave rat ate a few, bones and all,” one guy said. 

Rescuers said terrible things. They sent me home to be with mother for what turned out to be a few days. I don’t remember any of it.

I don’t mind solitary confinement. I’ve been caged for 48 years.

I’m used to it. Somehow it doesn’t seem that long. Besides, food tastes better here than the rotten mess I ate in the cave to stay alive. It’s a taste and smell I don’t forget.

Someone put a bulb in the cell that can’t be switched off. It’s bright. The light drives me insane. It really does.

It’s protected by a metal cage. I feel its heat but can’t touch it because the sadistic bastards chained me to the floor—for screaming constantly, they said.

I so want to be with mother to tell her how enraged I am about the watch she gave that didn’t work. When I inform the staff, they refuse to look at me. For a year I didn’t know what time it was. I told them. I told them all. They know about it but don’t care. They say I’m crazy because of her.

Mother doesn’t visit. She never did. The staff said she died. They convinced me to believe unspeakable things.

“He did something wicked,” prosecutors said. “He used a bone-saw, for the love of God.”

Nothing they say is true. I know that now.

Not one word!

Who does bad things they don’t remember?

NO ONE!!!

Who believes it?

They make you hate. I see it on their faces.

I will snap these chains someday, I know it.

I have a plan.

A wonderful plan. 

Guards help.

It happens on Halloween night.

They break the chains.

Put your light on.

Listen carefully….

Boots are shuffling on lawns like dead leaves falling on the wind…

studying doors…

searching for final solutions.

Smash the bulb!

You’ll see.

It hurts in the dark and the cold. People do things—terrible things—to make it stop.

They shake like branches in a storm. They fill bones with ice and push down to the darkest places.

They control what’s true.

They understand everything.

Soon, so will you.

Truth becomes the trap…

Spells enchant…

fragile hopes collapse…

They watch you rot in that cave where everyone dies but one…

…and laugh.

HaHahahaha…!

Slither to the walls like snakes and find the hard folds.

Pray for sleep that cannot come.

Control truth. 

You’re one of us, now. 

The truth couldn’t be more clear.  

Hell is forever.

Billy Lee

NOTE FROM THE EDITORS: The essay, Halloween Revision, is a fictional work based on events experienced by Billy Lee—an Explorer Scout in a troop of spelunkers who got lost in a cave in West Virginia during the 1960s. The rescue is based on other events about which Billy Lee may or may not have direct knowledge. Billy Lee published a version of this story to answer the Quora question: Where in the world is it dark constantly?

 

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