I know that it's said that there's no real reference frame for a photon.  But let's pretend there is one, and allow that no time passes for a photon, ever, from its emission to its absorption.  What would this mean?  I think it would mean:

1)  Anything you do with any light experiment DOESN'T actually change anything, since in its frame of reference the photon arrives at its destination at the same time as it departs.  In fact, you could say that the photon does exist at all in its frame of reference-- rather, it is a bringing together of points, i.e. a bypassing of space and time to establish a relationship between say a star and the surface of some distant asteroid.

2)  Determinism is necessarily true.  The timelessness of a photon means that for sure, 100%, it is going to arrive wherever it arrives, and this is already "known" when it is emitted.  In other words, even if you fired a photon from the moon to the sun, and randomly interfered/didn't interfere with its path, it was already going to land either on the earth OR the randomly-interfering device, even if you didn't yet know what the randomly-interfering device was going to do.

3) If (1) and (2) are true, then time is, after all, a dimension.

Question: it's the inevitable /0 that causes scientists to say there's no frame of reference for a photon, right?




Comments?

(September 20, 2016 at 11:49 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Comments?

So you've changed your mind about free will?

(September 21, 2016 at 8:43 pm)Excited Penguin Wrote: So you've changed your mind about free will?

No, because I was a compatibilist anyway.  What I might be changing my mind on is the real philosophical impact of the speed of light limit, time, etc.

Yeah, it's a /0, effectively. Or an infinity, depending on how you look at it...

(September 20, 2016 at 11:49 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I know that it's said that there's no real reference frame for a photon.  But let's pretend there is one, and allow that no time passes for a photon, ever, from its emission to its absorption.

Why would you say that no time passes for a photon?

(September 22, 2016 at 6:04 pm)wiploc Wrote:

(September 20, 2016 at 11:49 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I know that it's said that there's no real reference frame for a photon.  But let's pretend there is one, and allow that no time passes for a photon, ever, from its emission to its absorption.

Why would you say that no time passes for a photon?

Because it's moving at the speed of light. I'm pretty sure as Alex said, that it's just considered "broken" because of a /0. But while I'm pretty poor at math, it seems to me that you can see that the limit of things moving closer to the speed of light is that the passage of time is approaching a zero rate. The same goes for stuff stuck in a black hole, no? That they are essentially frozen in time relative to our perspective?

(September 23, 2016 at 7:08 pm)bennyboy Wrote:

(September 22, 2016 at 6:04 pm)wiploc Wrote: Why would you say that no time passes for a photon?

Because it's moving at the speed of light.  I'm pretty sure as Alex said, that it's just considered "broken" because of a /0.  But while I'm pretty poor at math, it seems to me that you can see that the limit of things moving closer to the speed of light is that the passage of time is approaching a zero rate.  The same goes for stuff stuck in a black hole, no?  That they are essentially frozen in time relative to our perspective?  [Emphasis added.]

If X moves at nearly the speed of light relative to you, then it will look to you like time almost stops for X. 

But X's time will seem normal to X.  To X, it will seem like your time nearly stopped. 

So, to a photon (if we're going to ignore the division by zero) times stops for you, not for the photon.

(September 23, 2016 at 11:46 pm)wiploc Wrote:

(September 23, 2016 at 7:08 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Because it's moving at the speed of light.  I'm pretty sure as Alex said, that it's just considered "broken" because of a /0.  But while I'm pretty poor at math, it seems to me that you can see that the limit of things moving closer to the speed of light is that the passage of time is approaching a zero rate.  The same goes for stuff stuck in a black hole, no?  That they are essentially frozen in time relative to our perspective?  [Emphasis added.]

If X moves at nearly the speed of light relative to you, then it will look to you like time almost stops for X. 

But X's time will seem normal to X.  To X, it will seem like your time nearly stopped. 

So, to a photon (if we're going to ignore the division by zero) times stops for you, not for the photon.

You are forgetting spatial dilation.  The apparent distance of the sun from which the photon is transmitted and the atom which receives the photon is zero in the photon's (hypothetical and kind of broken) frame of reference.

(September 23, 2016 at 11:52 pm)bennyboy Wrote:

(September 23, 2016 at 11:46 pm)wiploc Wrote: If X moves at nearly the speed of light relative to you, then it will look to you like time almost stops for X. 

But X's time will seem normal to X.  To X, it will seem like your time nearly stopped. 

So, to a photon (if we're going to ignore the division by zero) times stops for you, not for the photon.

You are forgetting spatial dilation.

Gee, thanks.

Quote:The apparent distance of the sun from which the photon is transmitted and the atom which receives the photon is zero in the photon's (hypothetical and kind of broken) frame of reference.

If there is no distance, then there is no reason to think the photon's time was stopped while it covered that distance.