Re: At the speed of light- a photon's view

[Joe Darling <jdarling@emh1.otc.cc.mo.us>]

I do not know the answer to your question and perhaps there isn't a good
one.  However, I have often wondered about this very thing myself.  I have
not read what Einstein thought, but by extrapolation, it would seem that
everything, at least in the direction the photon was going would be length
contracted to be no distance away at all once the photon got going.  It
would also seem that from the point of view of the photon, everyone else's
clocks would have come to a stop, and whatever time the photon might think
had passed in its journey would be no time at all for anything else in the
Universe.  Again, I arrive at these conjectures from extrapolation.
Perhaps others can enlighten us both.

Joe D. Darling   jdarling@emh1.otc.cc.mo.us
Instructor of Physics and Physical Science  
Ozarks Technical Community College
815 North Sherman Avenue   Springfield, MO 65802
(417) 895- 7295   (417) 895-7249 FAX

On Fri, 14 Mar 1997, Ken Fox wrote:

> Every year I am asked to answer what things look like when traveling at the
> speed of light. I know that is prohibited. But today the question took the
> form of " how would one photon describe another photon?"  I know that
> Einstein tried to imagine what an em wave would look like if traveling with
> it, but I don't know/understand what he decided he saw.
>
> I feel inadequate in not knowing about this or being able to satisfy the
> curiosity of my students. Can anyone help me out?
>
> Ken Fox
> Smoky Hill High School
> 16100 Smoky Hill Rd
> Aurora,CO.80015
> 303-693-1700
> kfox@shhs1.smoky.org
> http://stega.smoky.org/~kfox/Physics.html