[vlovich123]

Hmm... is the right mental model then that the photon has a speed higher than C in its photon state but on average it's C due to the fluctuation into an electron/positron pair? I would imagine that's the wrong model because there's contradictions that arise (e.g. the speed of light would vary with the energy of the photons so that those not fluctuating would have a higher speed but that's not the case AFAIK). Is this just "quantum mechanical weirdness" or do we have an "intuitive" explanation for how the speed of light and this fluctuation interplay?