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Luke_A_Somers comments on Stupid Questions Thread - January 2014 - Less Wrong
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On the Neil Degrasse Tyson Q&A on reddit, someone asked: "Since time slows relative to the speed of light, does this mean that photons are essentially not moving through time at all?"
Tyson responded "yes. Precisely. Which means ----- are you seated?Photons have no ticking time at all, which means, as far as they are concerned, they are absorbed the instant they are emitted, even if the distance traveled is across the universe itself."
Is this true? I find it confusing. Does this mean that a photon emitted at location A at t0 is absorbed at location B at t0, such that it's at two places at once? In what sense does the photon 'travel' then? Or is the thought that the distance traveled, as well as the time, goes to zero?
Getting this property for electromagnetic waves was one of the main things that led Einstein to develop Special Relativity: he looked at waves and thought, "If we do a Galileian transform so that light is standing still, the resulting field is an invalid electrostatic field"