# Western Slope Skies - Shedding light on special relativity: Why photons don’t get old

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/western-slope-skies-60132/western-slope-skies-shedding-light-on-special-relativity-why-photons-don-t-get-old
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/western-slope-skies-60132/western-slope-skies-shedding-light-on-special-relativity-why-photons-don-t-get-old.md
Podcast: [Western Slope Skies](https://stenobird.com/podcast/western-slope-skies-60132)
Published: 2026-05-08T14:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.kvnf.org/show/western-slope-skies/2026-05-08/western-slope-skies-shedding-light-on-special-relativity-why-photons-dont-get-old
Audio file: https://cpa.ds.npr.org/s752/audio/2026/05/westsky-050826.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/western-slope-skies-60132/episodes/western-slope-skies-shedding-light-on-special-relativity-why-photons-don-t-get-old
Duration seconds: 255

## Resource

If you have attended a night sky outreach event, conducted, for example, by the Black Canyon Astronomical Society or the Western Colorado Astronomy Club, then you have heard mention of the distance to a star or galaxy measured in light years, i.e. how long the light has been travelling to reach Earth. You might wonder “Do the photons get tired or slow down as time passes?”

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## Transcript

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