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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Don’t think of the speed of light as a speed. Think of it as the *relationship* or *conversion factor* between space and time. While you’re still, you’re ticking forward through time at full speed (*c*). When you start moving, in a sense you’re trading some of that speed in *time* in order to give you speed in *space*. This means from the perspective of everyone else, time moves more slowly for you. The faster you go in space, the more you “rotate” out of the time dimension and the slower and slower your clock ticks from everyone else’s perspective. Once you reach the speed of light, your speed is rotated completely out of the time dimension and you’re *not moving through time anymore*. Photons simply don’t experience time; in a sense, they’re at a stand-still in the time dimension, and from their reference frame (if you could call it that), the start and end of their life is instantaneous regardless of physical distance.
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