If time slows when nearing the speed of light would light "think" it took less than a year to go 1 light year?

Question

I'm puzzled by the time paradox of near-light-speed travel. If time would seem to pass more slowly to a high-speed traveller, why wouldn't it also seem to pass more slowly from the perspective of light, itself? In other words, why do we say that it takes light a year to travel a light year? To us, perhaps, it does, but from the light's perspective, wouldn't it take much less time to go that distance, or even no time at all? And, if not, why not?

Answer 1

if you were traveling at the speed of light, which would basically make you light itself, time would never pass and you would be unaware of the concept of time.
when you talk about the light year, that's a measurement of distance- the distance that something traveling at 180,000 miles per second goes in a year. i know that it's confusing, because then you get into the concepts of proper and coordinate time, and proper and coordinate distance.
basically, if you are traveling at exactly the speed of light, which you cannot do, from your perspective it would take no time to travel anywhere, and therefore you would travel no distance. it's pretty freaky stuff.
we look at it a different way because we have a different perspective and travel at a different speed.
gosh i love relativity.

Answer 2

A good question. The answer is yes. Light thinks the trip takes no time at all. If you could travel at the speed of light, time would stand still. This has important consequences in astronomy. When it was discovered that distant galaxies are red-shifted, somebody suggested the "tired light explanation"; the farther light travels, the less energy it's got and the longer its wavelength. Einstein's relativity theory had already been generally-accepted by then, so it was realised that this couldn't be true. Time stands still for a photon, so it can't change. It can't get tired or anything else.

Answer 3

Light year is the measure of the time it takes light to move from one place to the next in a year. Light speed is a measure of distance, not time. Light doesn't move any faster than it can, so light can't move lesser/greater than what it is measured in. Since light isn't a matter, it has no mass to hold it back from moving, that's why we say light speed is the fastest speed anything can move. The only reason we say time slows when we near the speed of light is because we live in a world were we recorded our existent. So as you asked, from the light's perspective, it takes almost no time at all cause light is just a pure form of energy. Compared to us living and breathing entities.

Hope I somewhat answered your question.

Answer 4

The standard explaination is that light does not experience time. For anyone else if the light year was marked by two objects at a fixed distance apart the faster you go relative to the objects, going from one object to the other, the shorter the distance would seem to you.
Using that comparison light would say it experieced no time and traveled no distance. The universe is a two dimesional would and light is at a fixed point. Of course that makes no sense at all but there it is.

Answer 5

I think you need to understand that it does not take light a year to travel a lightyear. A lightyear is how far light travels in a year, from our perspective, Of course it would seem like nothing from lights perspective,but here is the interesting thing, there is no way to answer this question, there is no possible way to travel at light speed. So don't even bother trying to wrap your head around this one.

Answer 6

I think that you answered your own question the reason we say it takes light a year to travel a light year is because to US it does take a year. You are trying to think in two different reference frames at once. I have learned that doing that will only make your head hurt. In our reference frame a light year is the distance light in a vacuum travels in one year. At the speed of light there is no concept of time nor is there a concept of distance, so all the rules are thrown out the window.

Answer 7

Light does not experience "time". We don't really say that it takes light a year to travel a light year, we say that a light year is the distance a photon will travel in 1 year. Light cannot experience time so it cannot experience distance. We can only see light travel.

Answer 8

We measure the speed of light in vacuum in a laboratory which is at rest. It comes out to 3x10^8m/s. Then we measure the speed of light from a a laboratory which is moving with some speed. In this laboratory also we measure the speed as 3/10^8m/s.

This shows that from the point of view of light, both the laboratories (one at rest and another moving) are not different and they are in all respect equal to light.

Suppose we are at rest in a lab whose length is 3 x10^8 m, the light will find that the laboratory is crossing it in one second.

If the same laboratory is moving with a speed of .5 C, the light will find that the length of the lab as 1.5 x10^8 m and that the laboratory has crossed it in 0.5 s

Thus the light will find that it is at rest and all the objects are moving with a constant speed of 3x10^8m/s.


If the laboratory is moving with the speed of light, the light will find the length of the laboratory as zero and the light will not feel the presence of the laboratory.

Answer 9

Since light travels faster than sound,some people appear bright be4 u hear them speak