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.
No, Tyson's claim is not "basic theory at the high school level". It is a particular interpretation of a theory (Special Relativity) that does not work, for the reasons I gave.
> Photons put it all into the X, Y, and Z components, leaving nothing for the t component.
Wrong. The spacetime vector that describes a photon's trajectory does have a t component.
> Seems that a fellow named Maxwell got a lot of mileage out of the concept
Dude, if you think the concept Tyson described is the same as the concept that Maxwell got a lot of mileage out of, then you are the one who needs to learn more about "how it works".
