[waveforms]

This made me curious how long a photon lives.

"according to the photons frame of reference, Heeck found that its lifetime would be a rather short three years; however, from our frame of reference, light would live about one billion billion (10^18) years"

https://futurism.com/science-explained-long-can-photons-live...

[pdonis]

Note that this article is assuming, for purposes of argument, that photons actually have mass, equal to the current upper limit for possible photon mass based on experiments. But the experiments are all consistent with the current theoretical belief that photons have zero mass; and if they have zero mass, the concept of "lifetime" for a photon (and indeed the concept of "photons frame of reference") is not even well-defined.

[tinus_hn]

If they are moving with the speed of light no time passes for photons so ‘lifetime’ has no real meaning either.

[peteradio]

This according to measured upper limits on photon mass. Strong theory postulates absolute zero mass for the fundamental particle and in this case it will have an infinite lifetime.

[sbmassey]

Or zero lifetime from its own perspective, I suppose