Are Photons Timeless? | Federico

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the nature of photons and their relationship with time, particularly in the context of relativity. Participants explore whether photons can be considered timeless, the implications of their massless nature, and how concepts like time dilation and energy conservation apply to them.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • Federico questions whether photons are timeless, suggesting that since they travel at the speed of light, time does not flow for them.
  • Some participants affirm that photons do not experience time and lack a frame of reference.
  • There is a discussion about the mass-energy relationship, with some arguing that photons' energy does not equate to mass in the conventional sense.
  • One participant notes that while photons have energy, the conservation of energy does not imply that photons experience time.
  • Redshift is introduced as a phenomenon where photons can experience changes in wavelength and frequency, raising questions about the relationship between energy and time for photons.
  • Another participant challenges the idea of photons being timeless, suggesting that their energy is conserved, which implies a form of existence over time.
  • There is a debate over the relevance of mass in the context of photons and time dilation, with some participants expressing confusion over the connection.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on whether photons can be considered timeless. While some agree that photons do not experience time, others argue that their energy conservation and redshift phenomena complicate this notion. The discussion remains unresolved with multiple competing perspectives.

Contextual Notes

The discussion includes various assumptions about the nature of time, energy, and mass, which are not fully explored or agreed upon. The implications of redshift and the relationship between energy and time for photons are also not definitively settled.

Anymodal
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I'm not a physicist, I'm only taking my first subject on physics in Eng. here in Buenos aires, so I don't know much about it. But i find it so interesting that I spend some deep hours of thought ofently in it, and i just want to clarify this concern:

According to relativity your local time respect with someone else's time will dilate in function of the gravity field and your speed respect to him (Is that right?). As you move faster time will flow slower (just a way of putting it because time doesn't flow, does it?). When you get close to the speed of light time will dilate asymptotically to infinite. So if you would move at te speed of light -wich is impossible because it would take an infinite amount of energy- your time relatively to the to the other observer will dilate infinetely.

Photons travel at light speed. Therefore time doesn't flow for them. Does that mean that photons are timeless? Their existence is intrinsic to the time sacle of the Universe? Does a photon exist in itself without reggarding the events of the Universe? (I think i know they don't because if you can experiment with photons you are interacting with them of course, but i say it so you would point out what is the logic gap in this thought, if there is). What is it's nature of existence? What can you tell -anything- about a photon reggarding this aspect? Or - of course- What is wrong with my logic?

Thank you!

PS: Photons are massless aren't they? But they are quantums of energy which is equivalent to some mass, so it still makes sense thinking about photons as something that can be subjected to the time dilation, doesn't it?Anymodal-
Federico.
 
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Hit up the faq here and read about a frame of reference for a photon.
 
You're essentially correct. Photons do not experience time. It can have no frame of reference
 
Anymodal said:
PS: Photons are massless aren't they? But they are quantums of energy which is equivalent to some mass, so it still makes sense thinking about photons as something that can be subjected to the time dilation, doesn't it?

They are massless and have energy, but that does not make it equivalent to having mass. They do have momentum, however.

Photons do not experience time and that's just how they work. One thing you have to deal with is that not everything needs to experience every type of parameter you can imagine. For example, in thermodynamics you say that a large number of particles can have a temperature. The deal with thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, however, is the assumption of a large number of particles. If I were to isolate a single particle and ask "what is the temperature of this particle", the question would not make sense as a temperature is only applicable to a certain type of system. For the idea of relativity, time is a concept only applicable to massive systems.
 
Hi, Federico,

What you said in the main body of your post makes sense to me. The PS didn't make sense to me -- I don't see how mass is relevant.

-Ben
 
bcrowell said:
Hi, Federico,

What you said in the main body of your post makes sense to me. The PS didn't make sense to me -- I don't see how mass is relevant.

-Ben

I think he is saying the energy of a photon is the same thing as mass, and since mass-carrying entities are subject to the other phenomena of shifted reference frames, time-dilation should be included.

This misinterprets the mass-energy relationship, which not 'equivalence' in the complete formal sense. e=mc2 shows an 'exchange' relationship, as it were, but dollars are not the same thing as groceries.
 
danR said:
I think he is saying the energy of a photon is the same thing as mass, and since mass-carrying entities are subject to the other phenomena of shifted reference frames, time-dilation should be included.

This misinterprets the mass-energy relationship, which not 'equivalence' in the complete formal sense. e=mc2 shows an 'exchange' relationship, as it were, but dollars are not the same thing as groceries.

Thanks! you figuered what i meant (and expanded it and corrected it :P). What are phenomena of shifted reference frame other than time dilation?...


Thanks every body for answering! i will reply you later
 
Anymodal said:
Thanks! you figuered what i meant (and expanded it and corrected it :P). What are phenomena of shifted reference frame other than time dilation?...


Thanks every body for answering! i will reply you later

Time dilation, energy increase (formerly loosely called 'mass' increase), and longitudinal length contraction, with respect to the frame of reference of a body with a different velocity, in Special Relativity.

I'll let someone give you a more complete answer. My area is linguistics, not physics.
 
Anymodal said:
Photons travel at light speed. Therefore time doesn't flow for them. Does that mean that photons are timeless? Their existence is intrinsic to the time sacle of the Universe? Does a photon exist in itself without reggarding the events of the Universe? (I think i know they don't because if you can experiment with photons you are interacting with them of course, but i say it so you would point out what is the logic gap in this thought, if there is). What is it's nature of existence? What can you tell -anything- about a photon reggarding this aspect? Or - of course- What is wrong with my logic?

Anymodal-
Federico.

I would disagree that photons are timeless in their experience. Photons have energy. And the Conservation of Energy has never been found to be violated in the universe. So photon energy is timeless in the sense that its energy is always conserved.

However because Photons can be "Redshifted;" this means that as Photons travel through space they can experience an increase in their wavelength, a decrease in their frequency, and an increase in the time component associated with the frequency of the photon.

See Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift"

Best
 
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  • #10
Sup_Principia said:
I would disagree that photons are timeless in their experience.

Photons have energy. And the Conservation of Energy has never been found to be violated in the universe. So photon energy is timeless in the sense that its energy is always conserved.

However because Photons can be "Redshifted;" this means that as Photons travel through space they can experience an increase in their wavelength, a decrease in their frequency, and an increase in the time component associated with the frequency of the photon.

See Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift"

Best

None of the above means that the photon experiences time.
 
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  • #11
Sup_Principia said:
I would disagree that photons are timeless in their experience. Photons have energy. And the Conservation of Energy has never been found to be violated in the universe. So photon energy is timeless in the sense that its energy is always conserved.

However because Photons can be "Redshifted;" this means that as Photons travel through space they can experience an increase in their wavelength, a decrease in their frequency, and an increase in the time component associated with the frequency of the photon.

See Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift"

Best

This is conflating the various uses of the terms 'timeless' and 'time'. One need only say that a fundamental property of light is frequency cycles/t. In that case we don't need red-shifting at all.
 
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  • #12
Sup_Principia said:
However because Photons can be "Redshifted;" this means that as Photons travel through space they can experience an increase in their wavelength, a decrease in their frequency, and an increase in the time component associated with the frequency of the photon.

I don't think this argument quite works. First let's simplify it a little. The idea of using redshifts brings up all kinds of connotations of general relativity, but it's not necessary to get that fancy. It's clear on much more fundamental grounds that the properties of a photon can change over time, where time is measured in the frame of reference defined by some material observer. A photon that bounces perpendicularly off of a mirror flips its momentum vector, so its properties change over time, where time is measured in the frame of the mirror. If a particle couldn't change its properties over time at all, then that would be a completely noninteracting particle, and therefore we wouldn't be able to observe it.

The problem with your argument is that it only shows the existence of some frame in which the photon changes its properties, but that isn't really the issue being discussed. The issue is whether there is a frame moving with the photon such that the photon's properties change over time. There isn't.
 
  • #13
Sup_Principia said:
I would disagree that photons are timeless in their experience. Photons have energy. And the Conservation of Energy has never been found to be violated in the universe. So photon energy is timeless in the sense that its energy is always conserved.

However because Photons can be "Redshifted;" this means that as Photons travel through space they can experience an increase in their wavelength, a decrease in their frequency, and an increase in the time component associated with the frequency of the photon.

See Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift"

Best

DaveC426913 has it right. Although the photon exists in spacetime, it cannot experience the passage of time as material entities do. If it cannot be held in a state of rest, it cannot experience time.

GrayGhost
 
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  • #14
bcrowell said:
The problem with your argument is that it only shows the existence of some frame in which the photon changes its properties, but that isn't really the issue being discussed. The issue is whether there is a frame moving with the photon such that the photon's properties change over time. There isn't.

What is time?
 
  • #15
atyy said:
What is time?

It's a 4 letter word! Don't make me get the soap and wash your mouth out!
 
  • #16
atyy said:
What is time?

Start yer own thread.

:wink:
 
  • #17
Anymodal said:
When you get close to the speed of light time will dilate asymptotically to infinite. So if you would move at te speed of light -wich is impossible because it would take an infinite amount of energy- your time relatively to the to the other observer will dilate infinetely.

When you do a Lorentz transform to a reference frame traveling at the speed of light, all time intervals and lengths become infinite.
So this means looking at the universe from the photon's point of view doesn't tell us anything useful.
If you think about it, from the photon's point of view, it would have no mass and no momentum, so it would cease to exist, so it makes no sense to look at the world through the photon's eyes. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is basically the right idea).
 
  • #18
Sorry, I got a bit of that wrong.
All lengths in the same direction as the photon would go to zero because of length contraction.
 
  • #19
atyy said:
What is time?

It's what prevents me from giving a complete answer to that question right now :-)
 
  • #20
atyy said:
What is time?

Baby don't hurt me...
 
  • #21
:smile:
bcrowell said:
It's what prevents me from giving a complete answer to that question right now :-)

Fermat thought that was space, but he lived before Lorentz covariance.

cephron said:
Baby don't hurt me...

"no more" = "no time"?
 

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