What happens?
2007-05-10 07:22:06 · 9 answers · asked by Anonymous in Cars & Transportation ➔ Other - Cars & Transportation
Suppose you're zipping down to the Dairy Queen in your Hyundai at 0.99c--in other words, 99 percent of the speed of light. While en route you flip on the high beams and perform various subtle and ingenious experiments that I will not describe here. You discover that the light from the headlamps is traveling away from you at (surprise!) the speed of light. In other words, your headlights operate normally.
Now suppose a stationary observer at the side of the road performs the same experiment on the same beam of light. She (her name is Myra) discovers that the beam is moving away from her at speed c also. But how can this be, you ask? Since I'm going nearly the S. of L. to start with, shouldn't that give the photons emitted by the headlamps a running start, so to speak, enabling them to travel nearly twice the speed of light with respect to Myra?
Not to put too fine a point on it, no. The explanation for this is a little complicated, but the gist of it is this: when your speed approaches c, you and all your measuring sticks become foreshortened, i.e., squished like an accordion along your axis of travel. This throws off all your measurements, making the light beam appear to recede from you at the same speed c no matter how fast you're "really" going. Unfortunately, nobody knows how fast you're "really" going, because in this morally permissive universe of ours, everything's relative. You think I'm moving and you're not? Hey, maybe the truth is you're moving and I'm not. Only God knows, and ip ain't saying.
No doubt this still leaves a few questions in your mind, but believe me, thousands have been over this ground before, and nobody's poked holes in the theory of relativity yet. For an excellent short treatment of the subject, see Space and Time in Special Relativity by N. David Mermin (1968).
2007-05-10 07:25:06 · answer #1 · answered by They call me ... Trixie. 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Let's modify that a bit... let's say you are going at 99.9999% of the speed of light.
To you, the driver, because time has slowed down almost to a stop, you see the beam of light take off from your headlights at the speed of light (or so it seems to you, because time has slowed down to almost a stop).
To someone standing still as you whiz by he would see (if he could see the photons from the 'side') light oozing out of the headlamps at the difference between the car's speed and the actual speed of light. The headlamp light would be travelling at the speed of light, but since the car is almost as fast, the light doesn't have to go so fast relative to the car, so it looks like it is moving away from the front of the car very slowly.
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2007-05-10 07:28:48 · answer #2 · answered by tlbs101 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
They light but there are no beams, since you are in the car you would never see the light, so you hit a telephone pole at the speed of light, which probably wouldn't be a good thing.
2007-05-10 07:26:55 · answer #3 · answered by blakereik 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Answerer "boo." really impressed me because that's exactly right, according to Einstein, But then I realized she had just copied/pasted the whole thing and I was less impressed. At least she listed the source, though.
2007-05-10 07:36:07 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
I did this so i comprehend the respond. Your lights will gentle your way!! they are going to shuttle from the shifting motor vehicle on the spped of sunshine from the fee of sunshine!! attempt it sometime.
2016-12-11 05:43:46 · answer #5 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You are going too fast to need to know!
2007-05-10 07:25:22 · answer #6 · answered by Double O 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You dazzle the guy coming the other way.
2007-05-10 07:25:21 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
I'll be sent to the future.
2007-05-10 07:24:25 · answer #8 · answered by The FFX Blitz ™ 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
you run over them
2007-05-10 07:23:55 · answer #9 · answered by Lord Inquisitor 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋