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?

Question

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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Answer 1

Things traveling faster experience time as moving slower (not just observe it going slower, actually experience time slower). At speeds people typically travel the difference is so small you wouldn’t notice. But it can be measured using incredibly accurate clocks.

The simplest way I can explain it is picture three people: one standing still (A), one on a bicycle (B), and one on a motorcycle (C). If the bike is going 5 m/s and the bike is going 10 m/s in the same direction. To person A the motorcycle looks like it’s going twice as fast as the bike, but to person B it looks like the motorcycle is only moving at 5 m/s (because *relative* to their speed, it is). Now let’s say the motorcycle is breaking the laws of physics and going the speed of light and the bike is somehow managing 100 m/s. To both persons A and C the motorcycle is going the same speed regardless of their own speed relative to it which means he experiences the same amount of time regardless of what the outside observer sees (because the relative speeds don’t change our observation of his movement).

Here’s a link to the experiment showing that faster objects experience time slower:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele–Keating_experiment