I know that it cant, go the speed of light, but hypothetically if an object such as a car went the speed of light in a vacume then turned on the headlights, could you see anything? I know the answer, I just want to see what people come up with.
2006-11-20 12:05:41 · 16 answers · asked by Elite 3 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
There are some good answers and out right crazy ones. First off you stated the car was in a vacum. Well light is seen only when something reflects it. A true vacum is empty. So no light at all even if you are going 1 mph or standing still. Also if you were not in a true vacum then you will still see the light. Pilot going super sonic speeds can still hear no diffrent than a fly in a car going 50 miles an hour. he is going 50 miles an hour too although he is only buzzing around the car. Image this if you jump off train going 100 mph. We know that you cannot jump 100mph however you manage to jump away from the 100 mph train. at this point your were jumping 100mph plus what ever your speed id while jumping.
2006-11-20 14:41:30 · answer #1 · answered by bamaboy_t 2 · 1⤊ 1⤋
I would guess that if the car was travelling at the speed of light the headlights would still project as they are travelling at the speed of light aas well.. A bit like being on a plane or train travelling at speed. Everyone is not crushed up at the back of the train/plane.
2016-03-29 03:32:50 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
this question has been asked so many times...(per theory) if you are driving your car in
space or on the earth and turn your headlights on...well since theory is that if you reach
the speed of light you become light therefore your car and you are no longer a solid
visible item. So therefore there will not be any headlights to turn on, you wont be there
to turn them on so therefore the answer is NO.
In the matter to time stretching...this is so the human mind can comprehend the speed.
At 186,282 mps you would be moving so fast so you could cover that distance in 1 second.
So in essence time does not change you are just fast enough to get more done in a second
so a second seems longer.
2006-11-20 16:50:50 · answer #3 · answered by orion_1812@yahoo.com 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Same as if you were going 55 down a country road to visit your "relative"s. The universe is a giant treadmill, what you perceive is dependent on the speed of the treadmill you happen to be on. To outside observers, you could be zooming straight ahead, straight backwards or not moving at all. Each would be right. It's all relative. The lights from your headlights would leave at the speed of light relative to you.
2006-11-20 13:09:01 · answer #4 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You will see the most amazingest thing possible as every color in the rainbow plus a few more comes into view, the entirety of the ages pass by and then you see God.
Well, you can't reach the speed of light, and as you get close you will become incredulously heavy as the mass of your ship increases, and you better do this in a supercluster void or something cause those pesky little atoms will tear you to shreads.
As you consume more energy than an entire planetary nation does in a lifetime your vision will increasingly become distorted until you can see what's behind you in front, the microwave background will be blue-shifted into view (see every color of the rainbow) you will pass millions of years in seconds and (see every age of the world in an hour) and lots of other really, really weird sh*t will happen.
Your intergalactic joyride will end when you run into an electron (shite), explode, probably make antimatter and disintegrate (see God), but not before having your (invisible?) light beam propagating outwards from the lens at about 1 mile an hour, redshifted way into radio waves. Am I right?
2006-11-20 13:08:46 · answer #5 · answered by anonymous 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋
If you had the nerve to turn on the headlights, you would see a beam stretching out in front of you for a fair distance until you smacked into something fairly large and you vaporized in a split second, never knowing what happened. Of course you could just hit a bunch of little teeney little specks of dust and get perforated into swiss cheese before you knew what happened. That is also possible.
Now, in reality, the reason you can see a headlight beam on Earth is that the light illuminates moisture in the air of our atmosphere. In space that moisture and air does not exist. So, you would see nothing. That is my final answer, and I'm sticking to it.
Zah
2006-11-20 12:13:42 · answer #6 · answered by zahbudar 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
You would see the headlights come on and shine ahead.
Reason being. The speed of light as example shown by a flashlight is relative as we know it to be 186.000 miles per second in relation to the earth which is a stationary platform as far as the person shining the flashlight is concerned.
The relative speed of the headlights is absolute zero as they are stationary on the vehicle traveling at the speed of light, but to the headlights, they are stationary and at ground zero.
When the headlights are turned on, they start from relative ground zero, (The vehicle) and will accelerate to the speed of light.
I once heard one of our supposed super minds say that if you were on a train going 100 miles per hour and you fired a gun in the direction of the trains travel and the muzzle velocity was 100 miles per hour, the projectile would remain stationary in the gun barrel. He is totally wrong and I won't mention any names, but he cannot speak and is confined to a wheel chair.
Darryl S.
2006-11-20 12:34:11 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
For anything that is not light (electromagnetic waves), speed would add or substract, depending on whether you are going opposite or in the same diection. In your case, if you shoot a bullet (instead of shooting light) in front of you, the speed of the bullet will be less than what an observer standing still sees. If an observer standing still sees its speed as, say, 1000 feet per sec, and your car is going in the same direction at, say, 800 feet per sec, you will see the bullet going at only 200 feet per sec.
But for light, the speed is a universal constant. No matter how fast you are going, no matter whether you are going in the same direction or opposite, you will always read the same speed for light.
2006-11-20 13:12:04 · answer #8 · answered by ramshi 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋
The whole car would turn into light, as the atoms that make up the car would vibrate at an incredible speed.
2006-11-20 12:12:24 · answer #9 · answered by synapse 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋
first to clarify, this isn't possible at all according to the theory of relativity.
ok if you actually MADE it to the speed of light..... then....time would be frozen for you in the first place. you would continue to travel the speed of light in a sort of stasis. you couldn't move at all, hence you wouldn't be able to turn on the headlights. unless you slowdown to 99.999999% the speed of light, then you would travel an infinite amount of distance in ANY amount of time. that's right. if you were going at the speed of light then you'd get ANYWHERE you were going in an instant(according to you, but not to an observer at rest). but of course you wouldn't be able to slow down....so you'd crash...and die lmao. either that or keep going until SOMETHING happened....something that caused you to stop....and even if nothing caused you to stop.....you'd ...basically be frozen in time forever then. cool huh
edit: if you were going 99.9999999% the speed of light, then when u turn on the headlights you'd see light come out AT the speed of light..... (to you, the light would look like it's going just as fast as it does if you were on earth), (but the light really ISN'T moving that fast to a observer at rest in respect to you, it's just moving at the speed of light, while you move slightly slower than it. Light moves at the same speed to you....no matter how fast you're going.
2006-11-20 16:51:46 · answer #10 · answered by katies_awsome90 1 · 0⤊ 1⤋