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Does a massless particle travelling at the speed on light in a vacuum (c) experience an infinite time dilation effect?

i.e. Would the time dilation extend from the perspective of the massless particle past the measurable existence of the particle by a observer outside the dilation.

Qmechanic
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2 Answers2

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It's not obvious what you mean by "a time dilation effect infinite in both directions". Did you mean into the past as well as into the future?

A massless particle experiences no flow of time; not into the future and not from the past. Just to make things even stranger it experiences no distance either i.e. as far as a photon is concerned there is infinite time dilation and infinite length contraction.

Re the second paragraph you've edited: I'm still not sure I understand you. Are you asking if, for example, the present and the beginning of the universe appear to the particle to be at the same moment, even though the particle hasn't existed since the beginning of the universe?

If so, I suppose there is a sense in which the answer is yes, but this answer would be very misleading. A massless particle doesn't experience anything so it's meaningless to say that for the particle some event A happens at the same time as some event B. In effect a massless particle has no time dimension, so it's meaningless to talk about whether two events happened at the same time.

John Rennie
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interesting name, why did you choose it? Anyways, time is shown to be absolute. Time moves at the same speed, that's it. Makes sense right? Since you can't stop time/slow down time and you can't speed up time it makes sense that time always moves at the same speed. Now you go fast, really fast, say at the same speed as time ( or light) as you said. Now relative to time you aren't moving in time since you are going at the same speed, sort of like driving at the same speed as another car. Ok, so imagine that other car as a point in time, lets say the time this post actually gets posted :v. ok so you are always "Driving" right next to that same time. that later time (or other cars lets say they are all moving at the same speed) will never catch up to young thus you will remain at the same time. For all us regular people who can't go light speed or get a car in the analogy, the the time just flies by or in the car analogy the car races by with the regular people standing helpless on the sidewalk never able to catch up to the race car. ok that was really wordy but that probably should help in visualisation.