Eli5 how does a photon not experience time when zooming toward point b? Wouldn’t other photons from point b passing it appear as time happening very quickly?
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I keep seeing this statements coming up about how a “photon doesn’t experience time”.
Usually what follows immediately is some kind of statement that basically assigns a reference frame to the photon, such as “If I travel at the speed of light then…”
The moment you do this, your question exits the realm of physics. It’s a nonsense statement. You’re asking a theory that tells you that you can’t ask that, what happens if you ask it. Even the idea “photons don’t experience time” comes from a tenuous interpretation of a mathematical artifact, not a LITERAL application of physical reality. It’s like the Alcubierre drive, it’s a mathematical construction not a literal thing in physics.
Imagine you calculated the time it takes a police car to catch up to your speeding vehicle. If you do this you get two values: a negative number and a positive number. Normally we throw the negative number in the trash, but in General Relativity instead people stare at it in amazement.
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