Supersonic91 Posted December 1, 2007 Share Posted December 1, 2007 Alright, now if a particle goes the speed of light, as many do, what is its nature in relation to time. To us it would be going the speed of light away. But to it, time would pass infinitely. It is odd that the light already knows what will happen as soon as its created, because it already sees the end of the universe. Does this make any sense at all??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iNow Posted December 1, 2007 Share Posted December 1, 2007 It sounds like you are referring to the idea of a "photon" having a frame of reference, and how time might be perceived from a photon's frame of reference (since it travels at the speed of light)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Skeptic Posted December 1, 2007 Share Posted December 1, 2007 I think that it is a flaw in our understanding that we cannot describe the reference frame of a photon. After all, the photon is there and it has no problem existing in its reference frame. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ajb Posted December 1, 2007 Share Posted December 1, 2007 The responses so far are correct. There is no rest frame for the photon and so it makes little sense to try to talk about a proper time. You can heuristically think of it as photons experiencing "no time", but I don't think that is a precise statement. It is more of an analogy by letting the speed tend to c in the formula for time dilation. As the Lorentz group in non-compact, you cannot consider a Lorentz transformation actually at c. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iNow Posted December 1, 2007 Share Posted December 1, 2007 So, in other words, photons are never at rest... they ALWAYS move at the speed of light. In order to have a frame of reference, they would need to be at rest. However... if you tried to put it in human terms, when the photon exists (hence, moving at c ... the speed of light), it could in some strange way be described as being everywhere all at once. Again... this makes little sense, and is not an accurate description. It's just a way to try to "humanize" the photon, and tends to lead to more confusion than understanding. It's a consequence of the math of relativity describing time and length contraction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Physics Posted December 10, 2007 Share Posted December 10, 2007 in my thought, the time reference for a photon is undefined, since the basic time equation for the time dialation is: t'=1/[(1-v^2/c^2)^1/2] and if the particle is moving the speed of light, then the time in its reference is undefined, thus its reference frame is undefined... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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