3 ms·

The photons we observed from the death of the star experienced no time between coming from the star and arriving to us.

jb1991 5y ago
Are you saying that if I’m in a spaceship, and I travel at the speed of light as I leave that star at that moment, and then I arrive here at earth, with my fellow photons traveling next to me, that I will have arrived at earth instantly without observing any time spent in transit?
- coremoff 5y ago
  That is correct. Obviously, given that, you would have no way of stopping, so your arrival would be abrupt (ignoring whatever magical affects would be necessary to accelerate a massive object to light speed).
  - jb1991 5y ago
    So in other words, if you can travel at the speed of light, you can be anywhere in the universe instantly, and never have to wait to get anywhere? I will say, that certainly makes no sense to me.
    - coremoff 5y ago
      it's a big "if"; it's not possible for objects with mass to accelerate to light speed. If you were able to do so, yes you could "get" anywhere in zero subjective time - as mentioned earlier, since no time passes for you, there would be no way for you to decide that you wanted to stop travelling at light speed - you would end your existence by impacting something. > that certainly makes no sense to me Humans, as a species, aren't experienced with relavitistic effects; we have no useful inherent intuition as to how things behave at these sorts of speeds. Most of us have to accept the maths and the experiements that demonstrate that our understanding of this behaviour is accurate.
- dav_Oz 5y ago
  This the reason why photons have no rest mass. And you having a rest mass cannot ever reach the actual speed of light, only a factor of <1. If you were to travel with 95% of the speed of light your rest mass would increase by 3.2x ... at 99% by 7.1x at 99.9% by 22.4x and at 99.99999% by 2240x and so on. The Lorentz factor is infinite for the speed of light. Time "stops" and the object contracts to "zero" at c. https://www.1728.org/reltivty.htm https://www.1728.org/reltivty.htm

jb1991 5y ago

Are you saying that if I’m in a spaceship, and I travel at the speed of light as I leave that star at that moment, and then I arrive here at earth, with my fellow photons traveling next to me, that I will have arrived at earth instantly without observing any time spent in transit?

coremoff 5y ago
That is correct. Obviously, given that, you would have no way of stopping, so your arrival would be abrupt (ignoring whatever magical affects would be necessary to accelerate a massive object to light speed).
- jb1991 5y ago
  So in other words, if you can travel at the speed of light, you can be anywhere in the universe instantly, and never have to wait to get anywhere? I will say, that certainly makes no sense to me.
  - coremoff 5y ago
    it's a big "if"; it's not possible for objects with mass to accelerate to light speed. If you were able to do so, yes you could "get" anywhere in zero subjective time - as mentioned earlier, since no time passes for you, there would be no way for you to decide that you wanted to stop travelling at light speed - you would end your existence by impacting something. > that certainly makes no sense to me Humans, as a species, aren't experienced with relavitistic effects; we have no useful inherent intuition as to how things behave at these sorts of speeds. Most of us have to accept the maths and the experiements that demonstrate that our understanding of this behaviour is accurate.
dav_Oz 5y ago
This the reason why photons have no rest mass. And you having a rest mass cannot ever reach the actual speed of light, only a factor of <1. If you were to travel with 95% of the speed of light your rest mass would increase by 3.2x ... at 99% by 7.1x at 99.9% by 22.4x and at 99.99999% by 2240x and so on. The Lorentz factor is infinite for the speed of light. Time "stops" and the object contracts to "zero" at c. https://www.1728.org/reltivty.htm https://www.1728.org/reltivty.htm