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kfh
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Hello all, this will be my first post on these forums though I've been lurking about for a while.
I was thinking to myself about light and the maximum speed of light, and I thought of the following:
A photon travels at 'c', the speed of light, in a vacuum.
If it were possible to be there, traveling at that speed, toward some point, 'p', the point would appear to be traveling toward you at lightspeed as well.
Upon thinking further, I realized that you would have no way to know where p is, or your relation to p, or to anything else for that matter. If indeed nothing can exceed the speed of light, you would have no way of having information about anything at all until you interacted with it, after which time of course it is too late to do anything about it.
I considered this in relation to the double-slit experiment, where you cannot know which slit a photon will "choose" to go through until it has done so. Thinking about it in this way, the photon itself does not "know" that either one, the other, or no slit exists at all. If the photon is restricted from this information, perhaps that is somehow reflected in our observation of it.
Anyway, I find this an interesting topic to think about. I'm merely an undergrad studying physics but I would like to know more about this particular topic. Can anyone shed some light on it, or recommend some good reading? Thanks!
I was thinking to myself about light and the maximum speed of light, and I thought of the following:
A photon travels at 'c', the speed of light, in a vacuum.
If it were possible to be there, traveling at that speed, toward some point, 'p', the point would appear to be traveling toward you at lightspeed as well.
Upon thinking further, I realized that you would have no way to know where p is, or your relation to p, or to anything else for that matter. If indeed nothing can exceed the speed of light, you would have no way of having information about anything at all until you interacted with it, after which time of course it is too late to do anything about it.
I considered this in relation to the double-slit experiment, where you cannot know which slit a photon will "choose" to go through until it has done so. Thinking about it in this way, the photon itself does not "know" that either one, the other, or no slit exists at all. If the photon is restricted from this information, perhaps that is somehow reflected in our observation of it.
Anyway, I find this an interesting topic to think about. I'm merely an undergrad studying physics but I would like to know more about this particular topic. Can anyone shed some light on it, or recommend some good reading? Thanks!
