How to make sense of a photon time and space being dilated infinitely?

Question

For a photon or anything that travels at the speed of light, time is dilated infinitely, meaning there is no time. Also, length along the direction of motion is dilated infinitely, meaning the length of the universe along that direction becomes zero. Is this interpretation correct? How do you make sense of this? Does it mean that the photon is omni-present at all times and places? Does this imply some kinds of connection with field theory, where it becomes a field that is just present everywhere?

Answer 1

How do you make sense of this?

You don’t. A pulse of light does not have an inertial reference frame where it is at rest. This should be clear since by Einstein’s 2nd postulate a pulse of light travels at c in all inertial frames and so it cannot be at rest in any inertial frame.

This is a genuine self contradiction, not merely a confusing thing to learn. All you can do is discard the concept.

Answer 2

The thing you are really talking about is called the null interval, and that is what gives special relativity its interesting spacetime structure, and a property called non-locality.

There is a nice chapter about this in Reflections on Relativity