Kind of. The concept of simultaneity breaks down at distances where the speed of light matters. If we base it on what we currently observe and call “now” on the Sun the eight minute old state we currently observe then what does “now” on earth look like from the point of view of the Sun at that same moment? You can’t reconcile a single “now” for observers in both locations.
An alternative take which is also consistent with observable physics is that the speed of light is infinite but it’s causality itself that propagates at c.
Thinking in those terms also makes a number of relativistic effects more intuitive. You need infinite energy to reach the speed of light simply because it’s infinitely fast. Time dilates when moving because you’re encountering approaching causality earlier than you otherwise would have. Time “stops” for anything traveling at the speed of light because at infinite speed it just experiences literally everything in its line of travel at once and the concept of “after” becomes meaningless, encountering all future oncoming causality in a single instant.
This was a bit of a tangent but it’s something that has fascinated me for a long time.
Yes, but bad news travels much faster, and the sun disappearing would be very bad news to at least some people.
I’m trying to understand how that reference frame works when you just just bounce a photon off a mirror and time how long it takes to come back? Like, light must have a non-infinite speed to the stationary observer, or it wouldn’t take time to traverse the distance.
The observable effect is the same either way. If light is infinitely fast and causality propagates at c then it’s still going to take (distance to the mirror / c) for the fact that you turned on the light to reach the mirror, and that same amount of time for the fact that the light reflected to propagate back to you.
Those two things don’t square. If you’re moving relative to the mirror when your fire the photon, it would hit in a different place than if you were stationary. The photon can’t be moving infinitely fast in your reference frame for that to happen.
thats the thing, thats from your reference frame. From the photons perspective time stands still and everything happens at once
But that also doesn’t translate. If the moment the photon is created (from whatever reaction that caused the light source), to the moment it hit the person’s eyes had no time pass (nothing in the universe moved) then it would be instantly created and observed by the observer. But the moment the switch turns on and the moment the photon hits the observer (as miniscule as this distance is) the eye of the observer has moved from A: switch goes on to B: observed.
Yeah no time passes for the photon I guess, but the universe still moved around the photons travel.
