I know a photon has zero rest mass, but it does have plenty of energy. Since energy and mass are equivalent does this mean that a photon (or more practically, a light beam) exerts a gravitational pull on other objects? If so, does it depend on the frequency of the photon?
Answer
Yes, in fact one of the comments made to a question mentions this.
If you stick to Newtonian gravity it's not obvious how a photon acts as a source of gravity, but then photons are inherently relativistic so it's not surprising a non-relativistic approximation doesn't describe them well. If you use General Relativity instead you'll find that photons make a contribution to the stress energy tensor, and therefore to the curvature of space.
See the Wikipedia article on EM Stress Energy Tensor for info on the photon contribution to the stress energy tensor, though I don't think that's a terribly well written article.
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