Do photons experience time and if so how?

Question

I have read that accelerating continuously dilates time in the frame of reference of the traveller asymptotically until reaching speeds near c. You read for example that the voyager could reach the center of the galaxy in just 27 years from his perspective: https://www.quora.com/How-long-would-it-actually-take-to-travel-40-light-years-given-time-moves-differently-at-high-speeds

But from the reference of a photon traveling at the speed of light, how much time has passed ? And I know those questions are far from graduate level physics but, one paradigm you learn in highschool describes photon as both particule and electromagnetic wave, with a certain frequency. Could you ask then, from the reference of the photon traveling at c, how many time did it oscillate from A to B ?

Does time exists in the reference of the photon or is it traversing the whole space "immediately" in its frame of reference ?

Thanks !

Good question! I think it might be a duplicate of How does a photon experience space and time?. See also If photons don't “experience” time, how do they account for their gradual change in wavelength? and Is a photon “fixed in spacetime”?. — AccidentalFourierTransform, Feb 22 '17 at 23:11
Thank you, I did not know the question I wanted to ask really. This "solved" it for me : http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/193765/if-photons-dont-experience-time-how-do-they-account-for-their-gradual-change — Albert James Teddy, Feb 22 '17 at 23:20

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 22 '17 at 23:11

Special relativity applies to inertial reference frames. The rest frame of a photon is not considered a valid frame, and as such it does not make much sense to ask how photons experience time. This is one of those cases where you have to be careful with the limits of a theory.

Do photons experience time and if so how?

1 Answers1