View Full Version : Speed of light...
kiepie
10-10-2007, 10:39 PM
Okay on hi-jackings Idiots thread....:D
If you in a car and travel at the speed of light and you switch on the head lights. What will you see? :D
alf101
10-10-2007, 10:42 PM
nothing?
dablakmark8
10-10-2007, 10:58 PM
errr.......i dont know hey.the gforce will push your eyes all the way back,so i guess you will see nothing
ldmelsa
10-10-2007, 11:18 PM
Okay on hi-jackings Idiots thread....:D
If you in a car and travel at the speed of light and you switch on the head lights. What will you see? :D
At the speed of light you and your car's mass will become infinite, so you will see the end of the universe. :cool:
Highflyer_GP
11-10-2007, 12:21 AM
If you travel faster than the speed of light, the beam will shine backwards, which isn't possible therefore you cannot exceed the speed of light. You need to take relativity into consideration. As you approach the speed of light time slows down for the car and everybody in it, everything just works within a reduced timeframe. If for example you are travelling at 80% the speed of light, if you switch on a light within the car then it will appear just fine to everybody within the car. However the beam of light will only travel at 20% the speed of light with reference to it's target so to speak. However the speed of light is a constant and therefore to everybody within the car it appears to move at full speed.
Remember there's two frames of reference - people within the car and a casual observer outside the car watching the scene as it unfolds in front of them (well that's how our physics prof used to tell us to remember it). If you were to travel at 99% the speed of light, the light will still propagate at the constant speed of light, however to the casual observer the light would be travelling at 1% the speed of light relative to the final target (because he sees the speed of the car + the speed of the light - 99%+1%). However due to the reduce time frame, to everybody within the car everything moves at 1% of the normal time (i.e. time that an observer on earth would experience - 1 year to somebody within the car might equate to 99 years to somebody on earth).
Therefore to answer the question, AT the speed of light, the light from the beam will not shine because time in the car would have stopped, and that's where the mathematics appear to break down. This is just a rough explanation, which isn't necessarily 100% accurate but it works for illustrative purposes. However I could go into more detail if you like.
dablakmark8
11-10-2007, 12:42 AM
please do
alf101
11-10-2007, 08:39 AM
please do
What make of vehicle are you driving?
Are the brights on, or just normal lights?
You`ll probably still have minibus taxi`s trying to cut in front of you, so you`ll probably see one of them in front of you at some stage.
GougedEye
25-10-2007, 09:03 PM
errr.......i dont know hey.the gforce will push your eyes all the way back,Nope. C is the max possible speed which means you can't accelerate, which means no g-force. ;)
What would you see? Stars, nebulae etc. Basically anything thats in front of you that either produces light or has been illuminated (i.e reflected light towards you) while it was still in front of you. So no, (As HighFly said so much more coherently), you wouldn't see your headlights beam or anything that they needed to illuminate.
fxit_man
25-10-2007, 09:09 PM
are these xenon lights we talking about here?
or just normal VW ones?
lol jokes..
The_Techie
25-10-2007, 09:15 PM
You will see my house ;)