How are photons timeless?
Photons do not experience time. From the perspective of a photon, there is no such thing as time. It’s emitted, and might exist for hundreds of trillions of years, but for the photon, there’s zero time elapsed between when it’s emitted and when it’s absorbed again.
Does a photon last forever?
Now, by studying ancient light radiated shortly after the big bang, a physicist has calculated the minimum lifetime of photons, showing that they must live for at least one billion billion years, if not forever. The current experimental limit on the possible mass of the photon is 10-54 kilogram.
How can a photon travel forever?
Unlike some types of particles, they do not decay, meaning that they do not spontaneously turn into other types of particles. With nothing to stop them and no chance of decaying, the will keep going forever.
Are photons immortal?
A photon is immortal if it does not meet some matter on its way, or even another photon. If it meets a particle, it will interact with some probability given by quantum mechanical calculations. In that sense it is not immortal, because in interacting it may be completely absorbed into new particles.
Do photons have a direction?
In the vacuum photons won’t change of direction (they go at the speed of light) and you wouldn’t see the beam passing in front of you.
Can a photon be stationary?
Can a photon be stationary? – Quora. No. Photons only exist at the speed of light. As long as any particle is moving at a speed less than the speed of light, you can always (Lorentz) transform yourself into its frame, so that the particle (now) becomes stationary.
Where do photons end up?
Photons are not indestructible. They can be destroyed, as they undergo ‘absorption’ when traveling through matter. A photon is basically, a quantum of electromagnetic energy. In the process of absorption, one or more photons can be absorbed by nuclear particles or atoms, and basically get destroyed.
How old is the oldest photon?
It is 13.77 billion years old, give or take 40 million years.
Can you stop a photon?
No, it is not possible to stop a photon. Photons are always moving. They have a constant total energy and kinetic energy of ( p c ). The rest mass of photons is always zero which means they have zero rest energy.
Are photons ever at rest?
A photon always travels at the speed of light in a vacuum. It’s never at rest. Even when it’s travelling through glass (and “slower than light in a vacuum”), it’s still travelling at the speed of light – it’s just getting absorbed and re-emitted over and over and over.
What happens to photons at the end of the universe?
It simply expands. And since we can see light from back to the beginning of the universe, which is some 14 Billon years, any photon we were to emit would never reach the current limit of the “edge” of the universe because it is expanding at near the speed of light. It would never, ever get there.