Question??

[#juan]

Does this help?

http://tinyurl.com/ac73x

 

[#juan]

Or this?

http://tinyurl.com/9wq2p

 

[Dexter Sinister]

If you are driving down the highway at light speed and turn on your headlights, what happens?

Um... your headlights come on? :wink:

Pointless question, really, because you can't go that fast, but that's also a useless answer. We can, however, speculate a bit. It depends on the observer's state of motion with respect to the car. The basic principle of relativity, that the speed of light is the same for all observers, suggests you in the car would see your headlights illuminate the road in front of you as they normally would, because you're not moving with respect to your headlights. The speed of light as it leaves your headlights is what it always is, relative to your point of view. Assuming it's dark, of course. If it's daylight, you won't notice any difference.

So what would people standing by the road as you zoomed by see? They'd see an infinitely massive, infinitely short car go by, emitting great gobs of cerenkov radiation, as Nascar_James explained, and frying everybody in the neighbourhood. Ever seen a photo of the containment water in a nuclear power reactor? It glows blue because of all the high energy nuclear particles zipping through it at faster than the speed of light in water.

Somebody standing in front of your speeding car would see an infinitely massive object approaching, emitting very high energy radiation. I haven't done the calculation, but it'd be up there in the hard gamma ray range. The doppler effect, as #jaun's tinyurl links show, shifts the wavelength of light from your headlights way over into the shorter wavelength end of the spectrum. And somebody behind the car might see a massive black hole receding into the distance and sucking up everything in its path...

The real answer is that nobody knows, all the equations break down when you consider a massive object travelling at light speed. Frankly, I didn't do the calculation because I can't; nobody can. As you approach light speed, you get increasingly massive and more and more energy input is required to get another increment of speed, you shrink in the direction of motion, and your clocks run progressively more slowly. That's from the perspective of somebody watching you zoom by, you wouldn't notice a thing. When you actually get to light speed, certain quantities (notably your mass and energy content) become infinite in the equations, and you find yourself doing forbidden mathematical operations, like dividing by zero. Which is why physics says you can't do this and it's a pointless question.

But if ya wanna talk about what happens if you get your car up to 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of the speed of light, that we can deal with.

 

[MMMike]

You should check out the book 'The Elegant Universe' by Brian Greene. It touches on stuff like this, and with string theory and a lot of other cool stuff.

 

[Canucklehead]

Maybe one of you more scientifically inclined types can correct/clarify this...

Wasn't the teleportation that Rev mentioned essentially duplicating the sub-atomic states/properties of atoms in another location so that they were identical? Kinda like using a blueprint to replicate the same item/atom as oppsed to actually moving the item/atom from point A to point B?

I haven't heard about the time travel experiments though... any links available that a relative layman could understand?

 

[Frappuccino Dibs]

It could be argued that you would not know if you could see if the lights were shining anyway.

Let me explain.

Black is not a colour. Black is in fact the absence of colour.

White is acheived by mixing all colours together. I'm sure we've all done the spinning top with all colours of the rainbow on it - when it's spun it turns white.

Ok - now lets take into account the fact that we see anything because the light from it enters our eyes.

If you were travelling at the speed of light faceing the direction your going all the light and colour you could see would blend and become white.

Look behind you and what do you see? Nothing - blackness. This is because you would be moving away from all light before it had a chance to enter the eye.

I suspect if you could travel at the speed of light - you would be flying blind anyway.

Of course, this is just the Frap theory of light speed. I came up with this over an Orange Mocha Frappuccino.

It's probably a complete load of bollox.

 

[Ten Packs]

Re: RE: Question??

The light will be compressed to the point where you cannot see it.

If you've ever watched racing something odd happens with the sound...it changes as the cars go past. That's because the sound waves are travelling at a different rate in relation to the car. The sound is compressed as the car approaches, but spreads back out as the car passes.

You can notice that on the highway as well, but not as easily because the speeds are lower and the bastards make us use mufflers.

Light works on the same basic principle.

I did a crappy job explaining that, but I hope you get the idea. If you ask a silly question, I'll answer it anyway. ;-)

Actually, that's not too bad an explanation, except that it is the relative speed of the sound as it relates to YOU, the bystander.
Google "Doppler Effect".

 

[no1important]

In 1993, the idea of teleportation moved out of the realm of science fiction and into the world of theoretical possibility It was then that physicist Charles Bennett and a team of researchers at IBM confirmed that quantum teleportation was possible, but only if the original object being teleported was destroyed. This revelation, first announced by Bennett at an annual meeting of the American Physical Society in March 1993, was followed by a report on his findings in the March 29, 1993 issue of Physical Review Letters. Since that time, experiments using photons have proven that quantum teleportation is in fact possible.

Click above link for rest.



btw- how do you think Aliens abduct people? :wink:

 

[neocon-hunter]

I can see lasers and atoms maybe, but people or other objects such as tv's, chairs would be a diferent story. Probably impossible, but in a few thousand years, who knows?

 

[Vanni Fucci]

Re: RE: Question??

Of course, this is just the Frap theory of light speed. I came up with this over an Orange Mocha Frappuccino.

It's probably a complete load of bollox.

Probably...but it's enough to base a religion on, so wotthehell... :wink:

 

[Dino00235]

Re: RE: Question??

The light will be compressed to the point where you cannot see it.

If you've ever watched racing something odd happens with the sound...it changes as the cars go past. That's because the sound waves are travelling at a different rate in relation to the car. The sound is compressed as the car approaches, but spreads back out as the car passes.

That is only true of compression waves passing through a media.

Light works on the same basic principle.

Light has many qualities of an electromagnetic wave, and does not require a media for transmission. The analogy will not work.

Dexters explanation is good, and will work past this point.

The speed of sound changes depending on conditions. It is possible that the speed of light changes as well.

No... the speed of light is constant... regardless of the observers inertial frame of reference. To an observer sitting in the 'fast' car... light will appear to radiate from the headlights at the speed of light. To an observer sitting outside the fsat car... it will look like a car with headlights on driving past at the speed of light.

 

[PoisonPete2]

the light will travel out of the headlights at 386,000 miles per second. Dino got it right from observers positions in last post