From the point of view of a photon, is the universe a dimensionless point?

736 views

From the pov of a photon travelling at the speed of light, no time elapses from the moment it emits from the sun and absorbs in my eyeball. This is true also of all photons going all directions off the sun. This implies there is no distance either, for the photon, in any direction. So does this imply that from the point of view of a photon, is it’s universe a single dimensionless point? That is, for a photon, is it existing in a pre-big bang universe? And further, since there is at least one photon, surely there isn’t space for more than one …. And since it’s the same universe we occupy with that one photon (viewed through differing points of view), is all light that one photon, possibly superimposed countless times?

In: 1107

24 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

You can’t really talk about the pov of a photon because relativistic physics breaks down at c.

You can talk about what things look like as we *approach* c, as long as we keep in mind that a photon doesn’t actually approach c, it is c, so nothing we say about approaching c actually applies to a real photon.

Still, though, it’s interesting. As a particle approaches c, space warps in such a way that things in front get blue-shifted, and space will tend to “shrink” in your field of view, do things that were to the side of you are now pulled more in front. What was behind you gets pulled to the side. Things in front of you get closer because space contracts along the direction of motion.

As you approach c, what would happen is that the entire space behind you wraps completely around the front and all space collapses into a plane perpendicular to the direction of motion, which is the place you are in. All space you would have encountered from another point of view (< c) is in this plane. All distance to the front and back are now zero. (You can’t see anything because all light is either blue-shifted to zero wavelength or infinite wavelength. This makes sense because there’s no length in that direction anyway, and time has dilated to the point it has stopped.)

You are viewing 1 out of 24 answers, click here to view all answers.