mrs.warren Posted December 28, 2011 Share Posted December 28, 2011 (Theoretically) If you were to be traveling in you vehicle at the speed of light, and you turned on your headlights. would you see the OUTWARD projection of the photons? Or would the beams itself bend around the front bumper and shine out in a negative velocity? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moontanman Posted December 28, 2011 Share Posted December 28, 2011 (Theoretically) If you were to be traveling in you vehicle at the speed of light, and you turned on your headlights. would you see the OUTWARD projection of the photons? Or would the beams itself bend around the front bumper and shine out in a negative velocity? If your car were traveling at the speed of light time would have stopped for you, among other totally weird things like being infinitely massive and flattened infinitely in the direction of travel, but say if you were traveling at some outrageous fraction of the speed of light like 99.9999999999999...9999999% of c, from your perspective the head lights would shine away from you at the speed of light.... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrödinger's hat Posted December 28, 2011 Share Posted December 28, 2011 (Theoretically) If you were to be traveling in you vehicle at the speed of light, and you turned on your headlights. would you see the OUTWARD projection of the photons? Or would the beams itself bend around the front bumper and shine out in a negative velocity? To elaborate a bit on moontanman's explanation: This is, in fact, the premise upon which the theory of special relativity is based. No matter what your speed relative to anyone else, any light you measure to be moving through a vacuum with travel at the same speed of 3*10^8m/s. In addition to this, there is no concept of absolute speed or velocity. Your car moving at 99.999999...% the speed of light is stationary in its own frame. This frame is exactly as valid as the one from which it is moving. Travelling exactly at the speed of light is not very well defined, but at any speed below you will observe a light beam that you emit moving at the same speed as a light beam someone passing you (at 0m/s in their on frame, or 99.999999...% the speed of light in yours) emits (in either direction). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michel123456 Posted December 28, 2011 Share Posted December 28, 2011 If your car were traveling at the speed of light time would have stopped for you, among other totally weird things like being infinitely massive and flattened infinitely in the direction of travel, but say if you were traveling at some outrageous fraction of the speed of light like 99.9999999999999...9999999% of c, from your perspective the head lights would shine away from you at the speed of light.... Nothing weird would be noticeable. You would not become infinitely massive. An outside observer B "not moving" would observe you traveling at SOL and observe you becoming infinitely massive. But because you would not feel traveling, you are the one at rest and B is the one traveling. B is the one you would see becoming infinitely massive. It's all relative. Similarly, you would not become flattened infinitely in the direction of travel, B would (as seen from your point of vue). You would continue living and going at job as usual with your car and the light from your head lights would behave naturally, traveling at C. The only 'weird' result is that B would observe light coming out from your head lights traveling at C as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrs.warren Posted December 29, 2011 Author Share Posted December 29, 2011 Right. so this is where the twin paradox theory comes into play. Observer A is moving at said speed © and observer B is stationary. each see's their own perspective on each others "movement". Also, with the "warping of time" Who would age the fastest... more weird things! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michel123456 Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Oh not the twin paradox again... In the twin paradox, there is a difference: since they were born from the same mother, they must begin their little story from the same time & same place. In order to get to speed close to C, one of the twin, at least, must have accelerated. If only one of the twins has accelerated, the situation is not symmetric, and there is no paradox. If both twins have moved away from each other under acceleration (they are in different spaceships accelerating away from each other), the situation is symmetric but again there is no paradox. Each one will see the other aging differently, no problem. If after some billion years (for us who remained at rest) the twins come back to Earth to meet again, they'll have to travel under negative acceleration (deceleration) otherwise they will crash. IMHO the paradox arises only when you forget acceleration and when you compare simultaneously (it's forbidden by Relativity) 2 twins separated by a huge distance, bringing them together "magically" after executing some loop. IMHO of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
immijimmi Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 Nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light. You can travel very near it, and it would mean that you would barely be able to see anything in the path of the headlights, because the speed of light is constant and not relative to your movement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michel123456 Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 Nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light. You can travel very near it, and it would mean that you would barely be able to see anything in the path of the headlights, because the speed of light is constant and not relative to your movement. Now do you see Swansont why I insist over the difference between absolute and constant. immijimmi's post is a wonderful example. He wrote: because the speed of light is constant and not relative to your movement. IMHO the speed of light is constant because it is relative to your movement. Any observer, in any FOR will observe light traveling at speed of light. Even the observer traveling at 0,99999999C will observe light traveling at speed of light. It is like the donkey and the carrot. Is that correct? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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