I wonder, if say, a photon has the ability to see, what would it see?
However, we know if photon had a clock, the clock would never tick as for the photon or anything, time stops, as you reach the speed of light.
It would ``see'' a fixed wavelength. Its clock would, also, tick at a fixed rate, since it has a fixed frequency. It doesn't ``reach'' the speed of light, it travels at the speed of light, which means that its wavelength is related to its frequency by
λ=c/ν, where c=speed of light, λ=wavelength, ν=frequency.
Stam Nicolis Okay that's interesting.
I think the photon should not see anything, as for seeing anything it would need another photon to reach it, and seeing is actually a two way phenomenon - once a photon strikes an object and then it reaches to the observer's eye. In our case the photon is the observer, so since it is travelling at the speed of light, it would constantly missing all the photon that reaches us, since this photon will always be ahead of other photon (in terms of observing other photons). And hence, the photon would not see anything.
One can play with words a lot. What matters can be stated much more directly.
A photon interacts with particles that carry electric charge in a particular way. And it can interact with other photons, also.
So a photon ``sees'' other charged particles and other photons, since these can affect its properties, namely its wavelength or frequency (these aren't independent-it's the energy-momentum 4-vector that's relevant) and polarization-that's what ``interaction'' means. (One shouldn't forget that a photon, also, has a polarization state and there's a relation between the energy-momentum 4-vector and the polarization 4-vector of a photon.)
- Badges
- Science topic