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Travelling at the speed of light....

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2004 10:03 am
by hairyjim
Now go with me on this one....

If you are travelling at the speed of light in your car and you turn your headlights on what would happen?

Would you see in front of you? Oh thats another thought, could you see anything at all?

Im bored today.

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2004 10:21 am
by phpScott
great now I have part of a tune in my head that goes with your subject line but I can't remeber the rest of it. Thanks, THANKS ALOT :x :x

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2004 11:14 am
by hairyjim
....gonna make a supersonic woman of you?

:D

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2004 11:23 am
by emperor
Come on now folks, the speed of light is weird in that it is constant to all observers, so the headlights would work normally from your point of view. To a stationary observer however the car and the headlights would be going at the same speed, whatever that would look like... probably just a car with its headlights off.

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2004 11:49 am
by patrikG
Interesting, that's pretty much exactly the question Einstein discussed with a circle of physicists: if you would overtake a beam of light and look at it, what would you see?

@emperor: the observer would not see anything at all.

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 3:19 am
by phpScott
Yes a remebered it at about 2:00 am because I don't have internet access at home so I couldn't search for it and put myself out of my missery.:D

As for going the speed of light I'm more interested in if a stationary object could even make out it was a car, let alone whether it lights where on.
Something tells me you would get a few points for going that speed.

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 9:44 am
by emperor
I mean theoretically, if it were possible to observe a car zooming past you at the speed of light, then it switched its headlights on, surely you wouldn't see a difference even though the driver does? I'm no scientist and got what little I know from what little I read of The Elegant Universe, but in there it suggests that two different observers can observe two very different things happening and both be right due to this little quirk

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 4:05 pm
by m3mn0n
Light is like no other entity in the universe. It has no mass and no charge. Nothing travels faster than the speed of light.

...

Using quantum theory we arrive at several bizarre conclusions. Light does not occupy a position; it has no place. Light is not here or there. It seems, when scientists go about measuring it, that light is everywhere at once.

source
So with that said... I don't even want to begin to think about this question. :lol: