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The speed of light

שו”תCategory: generalThe speed of light
asked 1 year ago

peace.
I’m studying physics independently and have no one to ask, I hope this is an appropriate place for such questions as well.
According to the theory of special relativity, the closer we move to the reality of light, the longer time becomes for the moving observer (or rather, one should say that his measurement of time becomes longer relative to the observer who is moving more slowly). However, if we look from the perspective of light itself and apply the Lorentz transformation, we get a division by zero. My question is what can be concluded from this:
1) Does this mean that the equation itself is not valid in this case, like, say, saying that Einstein’s field equations collapse inside a black hole and we have to wait until a new, broader theory is discovered?
2) Or does it simply mean that light does not “experience” time. But the strange thing is, what does this even mean? Let’s say for an observer from Earth, light created in the sun takes 8 minutes to reach him, but what happens from the “point of view” of the light itself, it simply exists all the time and in all space (after all, length also shortens to zero for it)? Not created and not consumed? (How can we even talk about the creation of something that does not “experience” time?
And talk about it coming from the sun to us.


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0 Answers
מיכי Staff answered 1 year ago
The formulas are not relevant/defined for something moving at the speed of light. The mass becomes infinite. The rest mass of a photon is 0. No other body can reach the speed of light.

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Moshe Sellam replied 1 year ago

The mass becomes infinite for an object with mass, my question is for light itself which has mass 0. Are the formulas still irrelevant to it?

מיכי Staff replied 1 year ago

Indeed, as I wrote

אורי replied 1 year ago

Light has no time. To measure time you need a clock, and the measurement of time is relative to a clock at rest. Since light can never be at rest - it always moves at the speed of light - a clock cannot be attached to it.

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