[flr]

Interesting reading, however this seems to go into a circular type of argument.
Let's say light does not experience time. Then one cannot define a clock from the photon point of view, and therefore neither a ruler. With no operational time and ruler, how can we define frame of reference for a photon in the first place? If we cannot define a frame of reference for a photon, then how can we actually tell anything about its proper length and time?

[Bill S]

[quote If we cannot define a frame of reference for a photon, then how can we actually tell anything about its proper length and time?[/quote]

Could one not equally well argue that if light cannot have a defined F of R, neither time nor space has any relevance for light?

If that were the case, light would exist in infinity!

[lightarrow]

Light, itself, does not experience time.

That statement doesn't mean anything.

O course it does. That's a very common expression in special rleativity.

E.g. -  http://www.askamathematician.com/2011/07/q-does-light-experience-time/

It's not as though light thinks but then again electrons

You can create a frame of reference comoving with an electron, you CAN'T do it with a photon. Re-read you books of physics.

[CD13]

So to a photon created say at the big bang, or even 400,000 years later, no time has passed in its frame of reference, yet on earth, 13.7 billion years have passed?

[CD13]

Lightarrow ...  When people say "that question does not make sense", I sometimes feel sympathetic, but as quantum theory does not make sense anyway, that's hardly a reasoned reply.

Travelling close to the speed of light does slow "relative time" if I can call it that, so what's wrong with a thought experiment about travelling on a photon? Einstein did it.

By the way, thanks to you for all the patient replies to what will seem as senseless questions.

[Pmb]

You can create a frame of reference comoving with an electron, you CAN'T do it with a photon. Re-read you books of physics.

You shouldn't be condescending when you're as wrong as often as you are. Plus being condescending is rude and that violates forum rules.

In this case the comment that light does not experience time means precisely this, no more and no less: the proper time interval between two events on a null geodesic (i.e. the worldline that light travels on) is zero.

When something has a precise meaning it is said to be meaningful, by definition. Just because you don't understand things like this it doesn't mean that it’s wrong.

Let me give you an analogy from something you hold dear to you heart. The zero proper mass of a photon. The proper mass of a particle is that mass as measured in its rest frame or low velocity frame. The mathematical relationship between the particle’s inertial energy E and momentum p is (assuming c = 1) E² - p² = m². Therefore when E and p are measured one obtains the proper mass of the particle. That’s why it’s often referred to as its rest mass. Since a photon can never be at rest or move at low speed its mass can never be measured. It’s only meaning is mathematical. Yet we define its mass according to the m in E² - p² = m² being m = 0. But we don’t go around saying that it makes no sense to give zero mass to a photon. Or if we did you’d be a hypocrite. But you seem to want it both ways, don’t you?

[yor_on]

Maybe you could look at in form of change. A photon doesn't change as far as I know, not intrinsically at least. You have the expansion red shifting it, assuming that exist, but the redshift is a wave related phenomena, although it must concern a individual light quanta too. Photons are defined as existing at a 'source and a sink', but not in between. Why this is, is because there is no known way to measure a photon without destroying it. Everything you ever will see are carried by photons, they are the information carriers, all physical reactions are also carried by those photons, including all senses we have. And we know they have a source, at least indirectly, by the recoil matter shows when emitting a photon. We are also able to measure their impact 'hitting', and by that we find that photons 'travel'. The rest are experiments, theory and mathematics, defining how they travel, what properties we find them to have, etc. But if we go by experiments then a photon have a source and a sink, and they don't change in any way measurable between those two, excluding the definition of a expansion red shifting them.

So, change?

[yor_on]

From that notion you may be able to build a relationship between what change, with the help of those unchangeable photons, as matter. But it doesn't answer what the arrow is, because as soon as you have a change you must have a arrow allowing for it to change. Although it might be seen as a definition of  spectrum of 'time', from something that seems timeless intrinsically (photons), to all other processes that indeed have a arrow to them. So maybe timelessness exist in our daily life, giving cause to change and motion? Weird

[AndroidNeox]

Light, itself, does not experience time.

That statement doesn't mean anything.
1. It's impossible to create a frame of reference comoving with light.
2. If you travel at speeds very near to c, you will still experience time, no matter how close to c is your speed.

And this could be one of the many examples of people that misunderstand relativity  []

Einstein had no problem using the perspective of light in his thought experiments. The statement is correct. Nothing that travels through space at c experiences time.

Maybe you have read some popular book or seen a movie on TV, but I'm talking of physics, instead.
Study physics, not popular books, then we can go on with the discussion...
Regards.

--
lightarrow

The book I'd recommend you check is "Relativity" by Albert Einstein. In it he describes riding a tram away from a clock tower. He imagined the tram going faster and faster. He realized that, from his perspective, the clock would seem to slow down. And, at the speed of light, the clock would seem to have stopped.

Are physics students not taught how to formulate thought experiments? It seems to be a lost art.

[Pmb]

Maybe you could look at in form of change. A photon doesn't change as far as I know, not intrinsically at least.

The mentalpicture that I have is that the photon is oscillating as it moves through space. The polarization of light oscilates as it moves through spae. For a good description of QED using this notion see QED by Feynman.

[lightarrow]

So to a photon created say at the big bang, or even 400,000 years later, no time has passed in its frame of reference, yet on earth, 13.7 billion years have passed?

When you say "in its frame of reference", are you referring to the photon? If the answer is yes, there isn't ("a photon's frame of reference").

[lightarrow]

Lightarrow ...  When people say "that question does not make sense", I sometimes feel sympathetic, but as quantum theory does not make sense anyway, that's hardly a reasoned reply.

Travelling close to the speed of light does slow "relative time" if I can call it that, so what's wrong with a thought experiment about travelling on a photon? Einstein did it.

This is what is written in popular books; yes, Einstein "tried", maybe, to imagine what would happen to "ride a light beam", but what he actually found is what would happen travelling in a spaceship at a very high speed. In case you are interested *in this*, the answer is that you *would* experience time as normally as you are experiencing it now. The fact that when you will come back to Earth you find all the people there with more age than you (and their clocks too, of course) is because they have made *a longer* trip through spacetime (not very simple to explain here what it means). By the way, you can read "Spacetime Physics" - Taylor - Wheeler; it's a Very simple book but, at the same time, describes the physics correctly.

[lightarrow]

The book I'd recommend you check is "Relativity" by Albert Einstein. In it he describes riding a tram away from a clock tower. He imagined the tram going faster and faster. He realized that, from his perspective, the clock would seem to slow down. And, at the speed of light, the clock would seem to have stopped.
Are physics students not taught how to formulate thought experiments? It seems to be a lost art.

Probably you haven't understood, so I'll be more explicit. When I read "Nothing that travels through space at c experiences time" and I reply that it's meaningless because it's not possible to create a frame of reference which travels at c, I refer to travelling *exactly* at c. Is it more clear now?
Furthermore, even if you intend "travelling at a speed very near to c" (and in this case you *can* find a frame of reference co-moving with you) saying that "you don't experience time" is incorrect and, at least, misleading (see previous posts of mine).

[yor_on]

Can something oscillate without being a wave Pete, or at least have wave properties?
Maybe it can?
=

That one is tricky, considering the duality.

[yor_on]

Not being a wave I mean, although presenting us with a duality. Thinking of it as a excitation in a field now, and the field I imagine as a set of points creating a space, in 3D for us, going on and off (4D as the arrow is there), slightly whacky but still It fits my thinking.

[Pmb]

Can something oscillate without being a wave Pete, or at least have wave properties?
Maybe it can?
=

That one is tricky, considering the duality.

I've never heard of it. But that doesn't mean that it can't happen. In the case of photons its the direction of the photon's polarization that is oscilating.

[JP]

Can something oscillate without being a wave Pete, or at least have wave properties?
Maybe it can?

Sure, a pendulum oscillates and is clearly not a wave.  (A plot of it's position vs. time does look like a wave, however.)

[Pmb]

Can something oscillate without being a wave Pete, or at least have wave properties?
Maybe it can?

Sure, a pendulum oscillates and is clearly not a wave.  (A plot of it's position vs. time does look like a wave, however.)

Oops. Of course. There are countless examples of osciallators such as crystals, clocks, etc.