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?
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>surely there isn’t space for more than one
That is an unjustified leap of logic. Photons don’t “take up” space. As bosons, they can and do overlap in all relevant ways. The can occupy the same physical space and quantum states.
>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.
In a sense, they have no “point of view”, since there’s no time elapsing.
>And further, since there is at least one photon, surely there isn’t space for more than one
Photons are “bosons”, so there’s no limit to how many can exist in the same “place” (technically, the same “state”). Electrons, protons and neutrons are “fermions”, and so for them, when one occupies a part of space, there’s less room for others. On this fact the whole of nuclear physics and chemistry sits.
>…. 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?
No. There can be more than one photon. Both from our perspective, and (if any sense can be made of the term) from the photons’.
We don’t know, what we do know is that our current models don’t allow us to figure it out. Similar to the uncertainty principle, answering that question would require us to drastically change our understanding of the universe, IF it’s at all possible.
Let’s suppose there is a point of view of a photon, or “ride a beam of light” as Einstein dreamed
Then, from this point of view, a photon traveling next to us in the same direction is going to be static, just like two cars on an interstate going at the speed limit.
We just broke one of our fundamental physical laws: from our point of view, there is light stationary
So, speaking about what a photon perceives requires ignoring laws we have proven millions of times
What you described is true even before the photon leaves a star. POV is a function of consciousness
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.)
“Well you see, us humans can’t even fathom that kind of time, because it’s really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really *fun* to imagine a speed of light ride.” -Dr. Jimes Tooper
I’m a little late to what appears to have become a party.
>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 implies there is no distance either, for the photon, in any direction.
You’ve correctly noticed that the quasi-frame of the photon is a 2-D frame, instead of the conventional 4-D frame. No time elapses for the photon, and it traverses no distance in the direction of travel. It’s only a quasi-frame because no Lorentz transform can get you to that frame from any inertial 4-D frame; but it’s sort of a frame, because the limit of a sequence of Lorentz transforms can indeed get you to that frame (although that limit is not actually in the set of Lorentz transformations).
>So does this imply that from the point of view of a photon, is it’s universe a single dimensionless point?
[Its](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc&t=80s) universe is not a single zero-dimensional point, but a plane. Only two of the four dimensions are collapsed.
the equations in special relativity are not valid when v = c. this includes the calculation for time dilation. anyone saying what happens for something traveling at c is pure speculation.
I guess the question is – from the point of view of the universe, are you any more than a photon?
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