this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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I'm trying to understand how that reference frame works when you just just bounce a photon off a mirror and time how long it takes to come back? Like, light must have a non-infinite speed to the stationary observer, or it wouldn't take time to traverse the distance.
thats the thing, thats from your reference frame. From the photons perspective time stands still and everything happens at once
Well, yes. Sorry, I thought the claim was that photons move at infinite speed, relative to a stationary observer.
But that also doesn't translate. If the moment the photon is created (from whatever reaction that caused the light source), to the moment it hit the person's eyes had no time pass (nothing in the universe moved) then it would be instantly created and observed by the observer. But the moment the switch turns on and the moment the photon hits the observer (as miniscule as this distance is) the eye of the observer has moved from A: switch goes on to B: observed.
Yeah no time passes for the photon I guess, but the universe still moved around the photons travel.
Let's preface this, I'm no astrophysicist. but from my understanding:
That's just the thing, different speed observers do not agree on when things happen, or even the shape of the universe. The faster you go the more the universe compresses in front of you, making distances shorter from your frame of reference.
From the photons perspective it instantly moves through an infinitesimally thin sheet of universe. Everything that "happens around it" from our frame of reference all instantly happens at once if you ask the photon.
Here's a really good explanation from someone far smarter than me https://youtu.be/-NN_m2yKAAk
The observable effect is the same either way. If light is infinitely fast and causality propagates at c then it's still going to take (distance to the mirror / c) for the fact that you turned on the light to reach the mirror, and that same amount of time for the fact that the light reflected to propagate back to you.
Those two things don't square. If you're moving relative to the mirror when your fire the photon, it would hit in a different place than if you were stationary. The photon can't be moving infinitely fast in your reference frame for that to happen.
Yeah I think infinite is the wrong word for them to use there. Maybe call it maximally fast? Like it goes as fast as possible no matter your reference frame, but that speed is limited by the speed of causality. The photon has 100% of its skill points in speed through space and 0% on speed through time.
Would it? What does "stationary" mean when discussing relative velocities? The mirror being stationary and the person firing the photon moving at a constant velocity is literally an indistinguishable scenario from a stationary person firing the photon at a moving mirror.
If I am moving relative to a mirror when I fire the photon, then the mirror is moving relative to me, and will be in a different relative position by the time the "event" of my firing that photon reaches it.
Also, the photon isn't moving infinitely fast in my (the firer's) reference frame. It's moving infinitely fast in it's own reference frame.
Yeah I eventually picked up that that's what you meant in your original comment, not that photons move instantaneously and that causality somehow catches up later.