2007-05-01 09:56:48 · 11 answers · asked by sam f 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
A car cannot travel at the speed of light so there isn't any answer to your question.
Sorry, I know thats boring - but no other answer would be correct.
However, if the car could somehow travel at 99.99% the speed of light, the driver would notice no difference in the speed that the light from his headlamps was travelling. Light will always, always travel at the same speed regardless of how fast the source is travelling (relative to an observer).
2007-05-01 10:02:49 · answer #1 · answered by Hello Dave 6 · 1⤊ 2⤋
Thats a smart Question.
To begin with my Friend let me tell u that accourding to Physics nothing can travel at the speed of light, as long as an object has a REST MASS it can never travel at that speed, its relative mass would be infinite.
Secondly, if u manage to put on the headlights on a car traveling at light speed there would be no change, the Light would still travel at the same speed, but something does slow down and that is TIME.
2007-05-01 10:07:10 · answer #2 · answered by Nithin 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
He was asking theoretically and all of you were wrong saying the light would go ahead light is a wave and has a fixed speed but the only thing that changes is frequncy and frequency times wave length equals speed, so light can not go faster than 3e8. Hypothetically turning on the head lights would create a sonic boom in terms of light only if the car was traveling at the speed of light. A good book to read is a brief history of time.
2007-05-01 10:19:59 · answer #3 · answered by starphox 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It is impossible for objects with mass to reach the speed of light. You can get very close, but never actually reach it. It takes energy to accelerate an object to a given speed, and that energy reaches infinity the closer you get to the speed of light.
So let's assume you are going 99.999% the speed of light, which is really, really fast. You switch on your headlights and the light seems to stream out normally ahead of you. The beams will appear the same color and shape as if you were stationary. This is due to the principle of Relativity as deduced by Einstein.
However, to an observer, things would look very strange. The car would be squashed like a sheet of paper, same height and width but its length would be almost zero. The color of the headlights approaching you would be bright blue (perhaps on an invisible wavelength like X-rays or gamma rays). As it passed, the light would turn deep red and move into an invisible wavelength like infra-red or radio waves. This is called red-shift and is how we tell when stars and galaxies are moving toward or away from us.
One other interesting aspect of travelling that fast is that time is distorted. The driver of the car will think that everything around him is happening very quickly. Time for him will have slowed down dramatically relative to the rest of the universe. He might think he has been driving for a few seconds, but a million years might have gone by and all his friends are dead.
2007-05-01 10:06:59 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
A piece of Trivia.
Einstein stated that he considered relativity based on the simple question - if you travelled at the speed of light would you see yourself in a mirroir you were holding?
There seems to be a lot of confusion about blue and red shift. If the light were approaching us then the wavelengths are blue-shifted - however how we would view the light would depend on the relative instensities of all the wavelengths of the light - for a laser then yes - definite blue shift. For a spotlight that radiates a lot of its energy in the the infra red region of the spectrum the light may appear redder as the intense infra-red light contracts to optical frequency.
2007-05-02 12:21:19 · answer #5 · answered by welcome news 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I agree with Injanier; this question has become very, very threadbare!
The answer is: if you were in the car, then the headlights would appear to you to behave quite normally. If, on the other hand, you were observing the car from some 'fixed' standpoint then the passage of time in the car would stop relative to you. Accordingly the question would lose all meaning.
2007-05-02 01:20:21 · answer #6 · answered by clausiusminkowski 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
One way to look at it is that at light speed, time stops, and therefore nothing happens. At all.
Another point of view is, if you want to seem clever, steal fresher jokes. A quick search of YA shows approximately 270 versions of this question. Feel free to search them for other answers.
2007-05-01 11:03:50 · answer #7 · answered by injanier 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
To be fair i don't think that a car could survive the stress of speed of light travel. But i did hear that a super sonic plane cannot shot bullets because it would shoot itself down.
2007-05-01 10:04:03 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
They would go in front of you. They would still travel the speed of light relative to your position.
2007-05-01 09:59:46 · answer #9 · answered by Gator P 3 · 1⤊ 2⤋
Dunno, but I replaced my headlamps with strobes. I drive down the motorway at night and it looks like I'm the only one who's moving!
2007-05-01 10:00:55 · answer #10 · answered by The Transporter 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋