(April 25, 2014 at 7:44 pm)Chuck Wrote:(April 25, 2014 at 6:56 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Can something independent of time experience changes? Doesn't a sequence of changes preclude cause and effect, which precludes time?
I think you are considering photon as a discrete object that travels through time and space, and so it must feel the effects of agents of change acting upon it as a sequential cause and effect. But photon is not like that, and thinking about it this way is bound to lead you to make unsupported conclusions about what is happening.
Think of a photon as a field that is mostly unobserved but spans the entire universe for all time. The interaction of between the field and local conditions give rise to the observed photon. The rule governing the behavior of the field is such that the observed photon appears to be localized and to move at the speed of light. But there are experiments that can tease out the simultaenous presence of the what is underpinning a photon at any location away from where you think the photon actually is at a specific time.
If you tack a clock to the location of the observed photon, that clock would move at the speed of light through space and would appear to stop to a person in a different frame.
But the photon "field" itself does not experience this motion, and is not subjected to this frame. This is no object that is actually following this frame.
Thanks for fleshing it out simply and concisely!
