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zuz
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I've been told that when a photon of light is created it instantly achieves the speed of light without having to 'speed up". How is this possible?
zuz said:I've been told that when a photon of light is created it instantly achieves the speed of light without having to 'speed up". How is this possible?
James Chase Geary said:Pedantically, photons are just light, so whatever speed they go is the speed of light.
To answer the question you are asking, however, the photons are emitted with a certain amount of energy. The process which goes into the photon being created requires the energy that makes it go as fast as it does.
Just to add to what others have said, emitted light is not a photon, it's a wave. That is, there are no photons in a beam of light. The wave only creates a photon when it interacts with something. This is important because a lot of people, I think possibly including you, think that the emitted "photon" is like a little tiny billiard ball that goes shooting off at the speed of light.zuz said:I've been told that when a photon of light is created it instantly achieves the speed of light without having to 'speed up". How is this possible?
James Chase Geary said:I just meant to imply that photons were created by a some kind of process already moving at light speed.
The speed of light is a fundamental constant in the universe, and photons are particles that are always moving at this speed. This means that when a photon is created, it is already traveling at the speed of light. It does not need to accelerate or gain momentum like other particles.
According to Einstein's theory of relativity, the speed of light is the maximum speed at which anything in the universe can travel. Photons, as particles of light, do not have any mass, which allows them to move at this speed. Additionally, they do not experience any resistance in the form of friction or air resistance, which would slow them down.
No, it is not possible for a photon to change its speed. As mentioned before, the speed of light is a fundamental constant and cannot be changed. Photons always travel at the speed of light, regardless of their energy or wavelength.
The speed of light is directly related to the energy of a photon. This is because the energy of a photon is proportional to its frequency, and the frequency of a photon is directly related to its speed. As a photon's energy increases, its frequency and speed also increase.
According to our current understanding of physics, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. This is because as an object approaches the speed of light, its mass increases, making it more and more difficult to accelerate. At the speed of light, an object's mass would be infinite, and it would require an infinite amount of energy to accelerate it further.