EM Waves

[methylethyl88]

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Can electromagnetic waves move only energy or are they capable of moving energy and matter?

 

[bullsfan1986]

only energy.

 

[seep]

Theoretically if a spacecraft flies very close to a large star and raises a broad sail, many photons will strike the sail and the spacecraft will be propelled away from the star with great velocity. It is the momentum of the photons that would cause this propulsion.

How can a thing have momentum if it is not matter?

 

[LuciusVorenus]

Theoretically if a spacecraft flies very close to a large star and raises a broad sail, many photons will strike the sail and the spacecraft will be propelled away from the star with great velocity. It is the momentum of the photons that would cause this propulsion.

How can a thing have momentum if it is not matter?

There's still a lot of debate as to whether light can be referred to as matter or not. Part of this debate stems from what you just mentioned, photons have no mass but have momentum (a lot of what Einstein worked on had to do with this).

So the answer is: No one knows if it is indeed "not matter".

 

[DougTPR]

In the spirit of the original problem that probably brought up the poster's original question, I believe the best answer is that light does not transmit mass much like all other types of waves - there is no net movement of matter in a wave only the net transmission of energy.