| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Ask Ethan #109: How Do Photons Experience Time? (Synopsis) [Starts With A Bang]
“Everyone has his dream; I would like to live till dawn, but I know I have less than three hours left. It will be night, but no matter. Dying is simple. It does not take daylight. So be it: I will die by starlight.” –Victor Hugo
Whether you’re at rest or in motion, you can be confident that — from your point of view — the laws of physics will behave exactly the same no matter how quickly you’re moving. You can move slowly, quickly or not at all, up to the limits that the Universe imposes on you: the speed of light.
Image credit: Noreen of http://thecampgal.com/2014/06/17/flashlight-giveaway/.
But what if you’re actually a photon? What if you don’t move near the speed of light, but at the speed of light? As it turns out, the way any massless particle experiences time, distance, and the Universe in general is entirely counterintuitive, and there’s nothing in our common experience that matches up.
A relativistic journey toward the constellation of Orion. Image credit: Alexis Brandeker, via http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/Spaceship/spaceship.html.
How does it all work? Find out on this week’s Ask Ethan!
Source: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2015/10/09/ask-ethan-109-how-do-photons-experience-time-synopsis/
