- #1
ViolentCorpse
- 190
- 1
Hello everyone!
There is a postulate of special relativity that says that the speed of light in vacuum is the same for all observers. This seems to imply (to me) that all the results of special relativity must only be used when dealing with observers who conform to the condition set by the postulate. If we don't keep this in mind, we run the risk of violating the postulate. So it confuses me when experts and non-experts alike use the equations of time dilation, length contraction etc. to assert that photons are "timeless" and have no space to travel through (it's contracted to 0).
Not only do I find it hard to imagine photons with such strange characteristics, I think (with every possibility of being wrong) that it is wrong to apply these results to something that doesn't even conform to the core postulate of relativity (for the speed of a photon in its own frame cannot be c and must be zero). But I'm only an unqualified amateur in physics and have no reason to trust my thinking enough to believe it, so I come here to ask, is it correct to apply these results to a photon? Why?
Thank you very much!
There is a postulate of special relativity that says that the speed of light in vacuum is the same for all observers. This seems to imply (to me) that all the results of special relativity must only be used when dealing with observers who conform to the condition set by the postulate. If we don't keep this in mind, we run the risk of violating the postulate. So it confuses me when experts and non-experts alike use the equations of time dilation, length contraction etc. to assert that photons are "timeless" and have no space to travel through (it's contracted to 0).
Not only do I find it hard to imagine photons with such strange characteristics, I think (with every possibility of being wrong) that it is wrong to apply these results to something that doesn't even conform to the core postulate of relativity (for the speed of a photon in its own frame cannot be c and must be zero). But I'm only an unqualified amateur in physics and have no reason to trust my thinking enough to believe it, so I come here to ask, is it correct to apply these results to a photon? Why?
Thank you very much!