No, this is not correct. The correct statement is that the concept of "elapsed time" does not apply to a photon; it only applies to timelike worldlines, not null worldlines.
To put it another way, if your statement were true, it would mean that the origin and destination events were the same point in spacetime. But they're not; they're distinct points in spacetime. Which means that, since the spacetime interval along the worldline is zero, you can't use the interval to distinguish points on the photon's worldline. And the concept of "elapsed time" requires that you be able to do that. So the concept of "elapsed time" can't be used for a photon.
Let's say I put you in a spaceship and accelerate you to 50% the speed of light toward the sun. From an inertial viewer's perspective you are travelling toward the sun at half the speed of light and it takes you ~16 minutes to crash into the sun. But from your perspective it only took ~14 minutes to crash into the sun[0].
Repeat the experiment except I accelerate you to .99c. From an inertial viewer's perspective you are travelling toward the sun at nearly speed of light and it takes you ~8 minutes to crash into the sun. But from your perspective it only took ~1 minute to crash into the sun.
Repeat the experiment except I accelerate you to .999c. From an inertial viewer's perspective you are travelling toward the sun at nearly speed of light and it takes you ~8 minutes to crash into the sun. But from your perspective it only took 20 seconds to crash into the sun.
Repeat the experiment except I accelerate you to .9999c. From an inertial viewer's perspective you are travelling toward the sun at nearly speed of light and it takes you ~8 minutes to crash into the sun. But from your perspective it only took 6 seconds to crash into the sun.
Repeat the experiment except I accelerate you to .99999c. From an inertial viewer's perspective you are travelling toward the sun at nearly speed of light and it takes you ~8 minutes to crash into the sun. But from your perspective it only took 2 seconds to crash into the sun.
See what's happening? As you approach the speed of light, the amount of time that elapses until you reach your destination approaches zero. So from an inertial observer's point of view, time has completely frozen for travelers approaching light speed.
[0] Using time dilation formula from this page: https://www.phy.olemiss.edu/HEP/QuarkNet/time.html
Yes, but you cannot extrapolate from this to say that the time lapse for a photon would be zero. A photon is not the limit of objects with mass going closer and closer to the speed of light, because "closer and closer to the speed of light" is frame-dependent, but a photon's speed being c is not. I can find an inertial frame in which each of your objects is at rest, and in that frame, you are the one who is "close to c" (in the opposite direction). But that doesn't mean your elapsed time approaches zero. By contrast, it is impossible to find any frame in which a photon is at rest. The two types of objects are fundamentally different.
In more technical language, the action of Lorentz transformations on photons is fundamentally different from their action on timelike objects. So it is simply not valid to view photons as some sort of limit "as speed approaches c" of timelike objects.
I don't believe that, and have never heard it before. There are many ways in which light actually behaves just like particles with mass traveling at speed c. It has to or conservation of momentum is violated.
I'm thinking of solar neutrinos which, for a while, we weren't sure if they were massless or not. We had to observe them experiencing a duration of time to conclude they were massive. If we didn't find that, maybe it was just an even shorter duration, not the absence of one and we would never be able to tell the difference.
Show me an actual textbook or peer-reviewed paper Tyson has written where he makes this claim. Pop science videos don't count. (Tyson is by no means the only one; Brian Greene is notorious for the same thing.)
You won't be able to because there aren't any. No scientist who talks about a photon "experiencing zero time" in informal contexts will try it in a textbook or paper. That's because they know that if they did, other scientists would call them out on it, so they confine such claims to contexts where there are no other experts so there's nobody to call bullshit.
Another point is that if this concept were actually scientifically useful, somebody would be using it in a textbook or peer-reviewed paper. The fact that nobody is is a huge clue that the concept is not scientifically useful. It's only useful for selling pop science books or getting views of pop science videos, where, again, there are no other experts around.
Photons put it all into the X, Y, and Z components, leaving nothing for the t component. They experience a change of position in space, but not in time. What's so hard to grasp about this?
Another point is that if this concept were actually scientifically useful, somebody would be using it in a textbook or peer-reviewed paper.
Seems that a fellow named Maxwell got a lot of mileage out of the concept, even if he didn't know what was really going on.
