SUPPOSITIONS AND CAUTIONS

This is a curious phenomenon. You might wonder, based on this result, about the shapes of photons, the particles of which visible light and all other EM radiation are comprised. Photons travel at the speed of light. Does this mean that they are infinitely thin, flat disks or squares or triangles hurtling sidelong through space? No one has ever seen a photon, so no one knows how they are shaped. It is interesting to suppose that they are twodimensional things and as such have zero volume. However, if they have zero volume, how can we say they exist?
Scientists know a lot about what happens to objects as they approach the speed of light, but we must not extrapolate and try to say what would happen if the speed of light could be attained by a material thing. We will see shortly that no physical object (such as a space ship) can reach the speed of light, so the notion of a real object being squeezed down to zero thickness is nothing more than an academic fantasy. As for photons, comparing them with material particles such as bullets or baseballs is an unjustified intuitive leap. We cannot bring a photon to rest, nor can we shoot a bullet or throw a baseball at the speed of light. As they might say in certain parts of the country, “Baseballs and photons ain’t the same animals.”