Here's another way to put this into perspective: Photons carry momentum, although it's too small to be perceptible under ordinary circumstances. If a typical p

Here's another way to put this into perspective: Photons carry momentum, although it's too small to be perceptible under ordinary circumstances. If a typical photon of sunlight hits an oxygen molecule in the Earth's atmosphere, and deposits all its momentum, it's enough to give that molecule a "kick" of a few centimeters per second. In contrast, a single one of these cosmic ray photons carries enough momentum (if it could somehow be delivered in the right way) to accelerate an entire E. coli bacterium, weighing as much as billions of oxygen molecules, to supersonic speeds.