If time stops for something moving at light speed, then how do photons move?

I guess we have machines to record photons in very slow motion, but if time stopped for the photon moving at light speed then shouldn't it appear frozen to us? What would things look like from the photons perspective?

G'Day, tis in the eye of the observer as they say.

If the particle is approaching a speed of light and had a clock on it, we as observers of that particle going extremely fast would see that time slows down and approaches this sort of eventual stopping. It is impossible to imagine the frame of reference at the speed of light- special relativity doesn’t really deal with that. It takes the speed of light as a constant and that’s regardless of what speed you're going at. So, even if you're 99% at the speed of light, you're still measuring c as c. So in that sense, it is difficult to answer what kind of time is the photon experiencing. But just to say that if you were a particle, maybe at 99% at the speed of light, in your own frame of reference, time is moving normally. You have a much faster ticking clock compared to the observer that sees that time has nearly slowed down. Actually, you’ve probably heard of this, but we’ve experimentally confirmed time dilation here on Earth. There was an experiment back in the ‘70s that put these atomic clocks on commercial aircraft and had them fly around the Earth, both in the eastward direction and the westward direction, and we’re able to compare, once they got back on Earth with sort of naval observatory clocks. Actually, there was this difference because they were moving faster than the Earth’s rotation at some point.

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originally posted by: arpgme
I guess we have machines to record photons in very slow motion, but if time stopped for the photon moving at light speed then shouldn't it appear frozen to us? What would things look like from the photons perspective?

You said it - if a photon had a point of view, it's likely that it never sees time pass, from a particle perspective. From a wave perspective, it's E and H fields merrily propagating along through space the way they always do.

From OUR point of view, it's moving at the speed of light.

a reply to: arpgme

I don't think light ages, but obviously time is not so important, or relativity is wrong..

I'm not completely convinced time exists.. I mean something of a dimension where 2 things can happen in the same spot separated by something (time) does exist, but....

Light doesn't have mass or light does have mass?? I can't remember which it is these days.. What other dimensions does it skip?


I have thought about this, but my imagination is limited.. I must be missing something.

a reply to: Bedlam

if a photon had a point of view, it's likely that it never sees time pass

That's interesting... so in essence, photons never die. They have eternal life.
Hmmm... "I am the Way the Truth and the LIGHT. No one gets to the Father but by me" just popped into my head unannounced. Maybe there is something to this 'Light-beings' concept people talk about. Maybe the spark of life is trapped in this temporal body of ours, and when released, lives forever. Lots of hmmm's and maybe's, I know. But interesting to ponder. (And cool if it all tied in, huh?)

I am no physics expert but in its most basic form, a photon is both created and destroyed at the same instance. Photons are perceived because of time dilation. From the photon's frame of reference it is both here and there at the same instance.

Time is a mathematical construct of distance and speed. So a photon's perception of geometric space is a point, which is either one or zero dimensional. Maybe someone else can make that clarification.

originally posted by: new_here
That's interesting... so in essence, photons never die. They have eternal life.

I wouldn't put it that way. It's more like, they're "born" and before they can blink, they "die". So it's like their lifetime is zero.

The photon that strikes our telescope, if it could perceive time, would perceive zero time passed since it left the galaxy it came from 10 billion years ago. So from our perspective, it's been traveling for 10 billion years. From its perspective, it never made it to be even one second old. It was born and died almost in the same instant, if it could perceive such a thing which of course it can't.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I wouldn't put it that way. It's more like, they're "born" and before they can blink, they "die". So it's like their lifetime is zero.

That is like saying that they never existed in the first place.

a reply to: Deaf Alien
From our perspective it's 10 billion years old, so I wouldn't say that.
But from the photon's perspective, yes it's almost like non-existence.
So it depends on your reference frame.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Which begs the question.

Do we even exist?

Oh boy we are getting into philosophy.

a reply to: new_here

In the beginning there was The Word, and The Word was with God and The Word was God. Nothing was created except through him and in him was Life, The Light of all man (kind) and the Light shines and darkness did not comprehend it. - John 1:1-5

This sounds like it could be physics. The darkness does not comprehend The Light because The Light is Life not darknes; so yes, it makes sense that Light is still and has eternal life but to us, at a lower vibration/speed it seems to move, flash, and disappear, but the Light is everywhere moving infinitely fast hidden at all places at once - thus seeming still.

The Word could also mean sound. Scientists are now saying stars have their own sounds.

a reply to: new_here

I enjoyed your post, and I think it's fun & philosophically valid to be permanently optimistic.

I agree far more with the direction of your thoughts than with the ugly, mechanistic & void direction of Arbitraeger's response.

After reading and thinking for a few minutes, it struck me that rather than light simply originating and terminating between two fixed points in space, through time - it might be worth considering that the darkness we perceive, the emptiness of space filled with 'dark matter', the time-space darkness is somehow encroaching upon the light field of eternity.

I have literally just started thinking about this, but it's perhaps a good direction from which to contemplate the gnosis of the archetypal 'Fall', and the loss of a third of the light sources - the 'Creation subjected to frustration against its will', and so forth.

originally posted by: eManym
I am no physics expert but in its most basic form, a photon is both created and destroyed at the same instance. Photons are perceived because of time dilation. From the photon's frame of reference it is both here and there at the same instance.

Time is a mathematical construct of distance and speed. So a photon's perception of geometric space is a point, which is either one or zero dimensional. Maybe someone else can make that clarification.

I can't clarify it (I'm not really an expert in physics), but I will add that what you say is interesting, because from the viewpoint of the photon, the photon not only experienced no time between being emitted in one part of the universe and being absorbed elsewhere in the universe -- but it also may not have experienced moving any distance at all.

So:
Time passed (from the reference point of the photon) = zero.
Distance traveled (from the reference point of the photon) = zero.

It may have been emitted in one place and absorbed in another, but from the point of view of the photon, it didn't travel any distance to get to to where it was adsorbed from where it was emitted.

"If time stops for something moving at light speed, then how do photons move?"

Generally, in a wave pattern following a straight direction.

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People
I can't clarify it (I'm not really an expert in physics), but I will add that what you say is interesting, because from the viewpoint of the photon, the photon not only experienced no time between being emitted in one part of the universe and being absorbed elsewhere in the universe -- but it also may not have experienced moving any distance at all.

So:
Time passed (from the reference point of the photon) = zero.
Distance traveled (from the reference point of the photon) = zero.

It may have been emitted in one place and absorbed in another, but from the point of view of the photon, it didn't travel any distance to get to to where it was adsorbed from where it was emitted.

I know some physics.

The photon doesn't have a valid reference frame, so it's not useful to analyze that, however as a thought experiment you can take a massive object as a reference frame, and imagine what it experiences as it approaches the speed of light, and try to infer something about the photon from that.

So, what happens to a massive object traveling across the Milky Way galaxy at 0.9999999999999997c?
You would still see yourself traveling across the entire milky way galaxy, and you would see all the stars in it, so the distance would definitely be greater than zero, but the distance would appear reduced. Instead of the distance traveled appearing to be 100,000 light years which is what an observer on Earth would see you doing, you on your fast spaceship would have a slow running clock so it would only take you one day to travel the 100,000 light years. Since you can't go faster than the speed of light in your reference frame, you can't travel 100,000 light years in one day, so the way that is resolved by relativity is the distance you perceive to be traveling is less than one light day.

So you can see where you will run into problems trying to extrapolate this to a speed of light photon. How do you still observe all 100,000 light years of the Width of the Milky Way galaxy as you travel across it, (like the 0.9999999999999997c velocity traveler does), but do it in zero time? The only reasonable answer is that it's not a valid question, because the photon has no valid reference frame. We might as well ask how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Mind = Blown

a reply to: arpgme

The Word could also mean sound. Scientists are now saying stars have their own sounds.

I agree. Universe - maybe the sound dictates their very existence and movement and keeps them in their orbits.

a reply to: FlyInTheOintment

Thanks for the affirmation!
This is really cool to think about:

the archetypal 'Fall', and the loss of a third of the light sources - the 'Creation subjected to frustration against its will', and so forth.

As I always say, there is much to know, were we but more aware! I always like to keep an open mind, so as not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. So much of the Bible is allegory, and just because it doesn't state "The following is a parable" doesn't mean it isn't.

***I do not mean to offend anyone who is totally against the Bible. Please understand I am speaking from my own (still-developing) frame of reference, and speaking in 'what-ifs' to boot. Please allow me the courtesy of sharing a thought that you may consider worthless. Thanking you in advance...

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

but it also may not have experienced moving any distance at all.

We are much the same, in that we do not perceive our movement around the sun, nor the solar system's movement around the galaxy, nor the galaxy's movement, etc... I love this thread people!

Say, all you physics wiz's out there, I have a question related to the above:
Do any of you know the speed of the Earth around the sun + Solar System around the Galaxy + Galaxy around the 'neighborhood' and so forth? I know everything's going in circles/ellipses, but they're traveling a speed nonetheless. Just wondering how fast I'm going, lol...