Photon Relativity Paradox

This is entirely hypothetical, as it can not be recreated as an experiment.
And thus, keep in mind that paradox means apparent contradiction.

Say that two photons are rushing toward each other from opposite directions.
And coupled with each photon is a perspective.

With what speed does the perspective of either of the two photons perceive the other photon approaching?

How does that correlate with the fact that, from an observer neutral to both photons (exactly in the middle), the photons are closing the distance between each other at twice the speed of light?

Fixed Cross wrote:

This is entirely hypothetical, as it can not be recreated as an experiment.
And thus, keep in mind that paradox means apparent contradiction.

Say that two photons are rushing toward each other from opposite directions.
And coupled with each photon is a perspective.

With what speed does the perspective of either of the two photons perceive the other photon approaching?

How does that correlate with the fact that, from an observer neutral to both photons (exactly in the middle), the photons are closing the distance between each other at twice the speed of light?

You might want to be careful pressing that issue. You can get banned off of most science sites if you argue the case.

Their response is one of two things;
A) Faith for those just wise enough to go along in order to get along.
B) Obfuscation for those too insistent upon logic and reasoning (warning: this comes with "pestilence"; gadflies, harpies, and locusts)

Many years ago when I asked that same question, they couldn't answer it without obfuscation. They actually have a seemingly valid answer to give, but they (physicists) don't typically realize it. And their answer isn't entirely valid, but is good enough for most heretics.

What you have proposed actually involves 3 perspectives, not merely 2. You are the picture frame and that is one perspective because everything else is moving relative to that frame. Then you have each of the moving objects because they are moving relative to each other as well as to you.

So what happens in common relativity theory is the realization that any time something is moving toward something else at c, that something else must necessarily be without depth, flat. As a photon approaches Earth, from the photon's perspective, the Earth is a flat disk.

What that means is that the right most light speed object approaching you would measure no distance between you and the left most object. It would consider you and the left most object to be in the same location.

That perspective can lead to yet another paradox that they also can't answer because it seems there are concerns in mathematics that they are not taught. I could both propose such a paradox and also answer it with proper math, but they apparently cannot.

That situation leads to me having to not get into that additional paradox because such would lead to its answer which would end up merely helping to disguise the fallacy of an incoherent theory, "assisting the devil to maintain his church".

So my advice is to simply accept that no distance would be perceived by either object between you and the other object and leave it at that.

They are at war. So choose your side;
A) one of the winning sides
B) one of the losing sides
C) outside
D) inside-out; the tricky method of being inside, yet out.

I can look at this situation one of two ways. First, it seems possible that light has no perspective at all, that being without mass or structure, basically a non-self-value that is a pure "reflection" of the mathematical laws of nature/reality itself, a sufficient-to-itself quantity, a photon would not be aware of anything. Saying that a photon perceives or experiences therefore makes no sense. So two photons traveling relative to each other don't experience or even constitute reference-frames at all. This seems to fit with c being constant, that it's unaffected by other stuff going on-- either a photon exists and is at c, or it does not exist (has been absorbed into an atomic system). This also seems consistent with the fact that photons seem to slow down in mediums; mass creating "gravity" adds more "stuff" as distance through which the photon must pass, or be refracted/bounce around, therefore appearing to us to "slow down".

Or, you could take the perspective that the distance between two photons is a measurement of information and had no actual substantial "existence". We know from entanglement that "information" can "travel" instantaneously (I.e. faster than c), so if you think of the distance between two photons traveling toward or away from each other as changing at a rate of 2c this is not problematic because nothing is "actually" moving faster than c, rather it's an issue of information without substance or force, the distance between the photons can increase or decrease at any rate regardless of c as the limit of velocity because the FACT of the distance between two photons is not a velocity or a "thing" at all.

The speed of light encapsulates each reference frame.
It's like a membrane beyond which nothing within that frame shall pass.

From the reference frame of object A, the closer object B comes to light speed, the closer it comes to absolute gravity. If it would attain this, the two objects would not be able to move away from each other any longer.

Thus the nature of c as a limit holds together everything by gravity. It forces all mass which is of influence to other mass to forever remain of influence to it - it binds together all already-bound reference frames.

It is an ontological veil between this world and something which is only possible in terms that are impossible here. Possibly that is simply "nothing", but I don't think that's the necessary conclusion.

Realize that an "observer photon" would experience it birth at the source and instantly smack into its destination no matter at what extreme distance that destination is or how long you thought it would take for it to get there.

Time doesn't exist for the observer photon. His "time dilation" is zero. An infinite distance, from his perspective, is traversed in zero time. And that is why he cannot perceive distance at all. So nothing can be "coming toward him" because space has no dimensions.

Another tiny little devil in the theory.  

Let's see - the change elapsing within the photon are infinitely slow compared to the change elapsing in the physical reference frame in which it has its cause and effect.

And 2 times zero is zero, yes, I think that solves it.

Fixed Cross wrote:

Let's see - the change elapsing within the photon are infinitely slow compared to the change elapsing in the physical reference frame in which it has its cause and effect.

And 2 times zero is zero, yes, I think that solves it.

We can discuss the RM answer to all of this in private or over at ILP where I don't have to wait so long for every button press. I can literally make 10 new posts there for every simple spelling edit correction here.

It involves a bit of math, but nothing you can't handle. I don't typically use their conventional math and physics symbols for a variety of reasons (I don't even know most of them anymore), so I explain what I use. The math is really merely for detailed accuracy, seldom for conceptual understanding (and when they try it for that is when they get themselves all screwed up. They need to leave metaphysics to the pros).

The bottom line is that there is an indisputable (definitionally locked) propagation rate that provably cannot ever change. That rate constitutes an "ironclad" standard from which relative measurements can be calibrated. It forms a standard for "absolute time".

The trick is then to form a device that compares that absolute immutable standard to local changes. I haven't thought about all of that for years. It seems that it involved a tetrahedron arrangement with which to read and compare a change rate in all dimensions. Simple math then allows you to know, due to the differences, what speed you must be moving, and without measuring against anything else around, and then compensate your time clock based upon that speed. If I remember right (maybe not) the gravitational influence gets automatically compensated. I'll have to figure all of that out again (usual for me.. I forget more than I remember these days).

Something good about RM is that there can never be any paradoxes (except to those who misunderstood something).

Fixed Cross wrote:

This is entirely hypothetical, as it can not be recreated as an experiment.
And thus, keep in mind that paradox means apparent contradiction.

Say that two photons are rushing toward each other from opposite directions.
And coupled with each photon is a perspective.

With what speed does the perspective of either of the two photons perceive the other photon approaching?

How does that correlate with the fact that, from an observer neutral to both photons (exactly in the middle), the photons are closing the distance between each other at twice the speed of light?

The second part of your question; it doesnt matter that they are closing in to each other twice the speed of light, it still is true that the photons themselves are traveling the speed of light. If 2 cars were traveling 50 mph towards them, just because they are enclosing twice the speed of those cars doesnt mean the cars are traveling more then 50 mph.

First part of your question; I think is the same answer. Though the real answer may be they would never be able to perceive one another ( because perception is based off of the nature of light/photons), so they would need light to reflect off of them, which it cant, and then travel back to them, and by then they would already have collided.