What proof is there that the maximum speed is the speed of light?

Question

If I travel in a vehicle at lightspeed, I can walk to the front of my vehicle. That means I move faster then the speed of light, or not?? Then: if I can, I can overtake the light and look in the past or not?

Answer 1

Well we have experiments which prove the speed of light to be a constant at 3*10^8 m/s. The Michelson experiment is one of them. It gave an approximate value. Today we have sophisticated instruments to measure the speed.

Its good you thought about this question. If you can understand the answer to this question you can pretty much understand why theory of relativity was needed.

Well the principal of relativity says "There is no way we can say whether we are moving at constant speed or at rest".

So lets imagine we are sitting in a vehicle zooming past at speed of light and there is a light source at the back of the vehicle. The common sense says that since the vehicle is moving at speed of light the light from the light source can not reach you. This way you will not be able to see the back of your vehicle. But if this happens and you can not see the back of the vehicle then there is a way to tell you are moving at constant speed of light. But this is against the Principal of Relativity. So you can not tell.

This means you can see the back of your vehicle. So something is wrong here. Yes there is. The time slows down when you move at speed of light. Since Distance=Speed * time. The speed remains same but time slows down. So that same distance is covered in more time and everything seems normal to you but person outside the vehicle can tell and see your hand moving in slow motion.

I hope this helps you. Its just an idea how this happens for more details read books about theory of relativity. Its interesting.

Have a nice day.

Answer 2

The truth is nobody actually knows the speed of light. We know the speed of the spectrum light that we can see. And even that travels at different speeds

The biggest critcism of Einstein's famous equation E=MC2. Is the Einstein put the speed of light as a constant instead of a variable within limits.

But we know that light travels at different speeds because of prisms. It is because white light is composed of different colors and the colors come out in the prism because the wavelengths or the different colors travel at different speeds otherwise they would not split up but the light would remain white.

The fastest color comes out on top of the prism and the slowest at the bottom. Since radiation has been measured both above the small spectrum of light we can see, we know light travels at different speeds.

Of all the spectrum of light, the human eye can only see 10 percent and no one knows what speed the other spectrums travel at.

So to answer your question, There may be a wavelegnth that travels so slowly you could drive faster than the light travels.

Answer 3

If I travel in a vehicle at light speed, I can walk to the front of my vehicle. That means I move faster then the speed of light, or not??

To your above question, the answer is you are not moving faster than light.

Though no vehicle can travel at light speed, we can imagine that a vehicle is traveling at light’s speed.

When every attempt was made to measure the speed of light when one was approaching toward a beam of light and away from of light, the measurement yielded the same value.
Using Doppler Effect we can measure the speeds of light having known the speeds of satellites of other planets when they move in a direction toward us and in a direction away from us.
The Michelson Morley experiment conducted and repeated many times conveyed the result that what ever the speed of an observer one has to measure the speed of light as a constant value.

Now with this fact in mind, when a vehicle travels at light’s speed, the observer in the vehicle will measure the speed of light as a constant.
When the vehicle stops moving, again he measures the speed of light as the same constant.

Therefore, it is evident that the speed of light is not affected or in no way altered by our motion. As a consequence we have to rethink or change our understandings about our own speed which we think that they are absolute or constant.

We have to think that they are relative and not constants.

Answer 4

Your frame of reference is the vehicle so you are traveling at walking speed.
The speed of light is an incident,an incident takes time to occur.
Time is a quantum entity,it can be divided only so far,the next division will make it non-existent.
To increase the speed of light would be trying to make it exist for a length of time that can't exist.

Answer 5

This will not happen because nothing with positive mass can ever move at light speed. Your vehicle may be moving at 0.99999999999.... times light speed, and you, as you walk to the front, will be moving slightly faster that that, but you won't be able to overtake light.

As for actual evidence of this, particle accelerators have pushed particles up to energies of billions of times their rest energy, but their speed has never exceeded light speed.

Answer 6

There is no proof. However, your counterexample is irrelevant. It is not possible for your vehicle to travel at the speed of light, and therefore your hypothesis is meaningless. Second, the speed of light is not subject to the rules of addition. Speed of light + 2 miles per hour does not equal a number greater than the speed of light.

Answer 7

No, because speeds do not add up like this.

To add up two speeds v and w the formula is
u = (v+w) / (1 + vw/c^2)

You can see that if the speeds are very small in comparison with c, the speed of light, then this equation becomes
u = v+w
which we are all used to.
But if v and w are close to c, the total is still less than c.

I know this is counter-intuitive, but I hope it makes sense.
.

Answer 8

Do you feel yourself being pushed back into your seat when you hit the gas from a stop light? That force is compressing your body a tiny bit. You are probably going less than a hundred miles an hour.

As you go faster and approach the speed of light, your body and everything moving with you compresses more and more.

At the actual speed of light, you would be so compressed, you would not survive.

Actually, on eguy has been doing stuff with a laser and thinks he has disproved the theory.

Star Trek kinda stuff.

Answer 9

You can use Maxwell's Equation's to determine that the speed of an EM wave is:

v = 1/(sqrt(μ_oε_o))

where:

μ_o = permeability of free space
ε_o = permittivity of free space

turns out that this is exactly equal to the speed of light (i.e.)

c = 1/(sqrt(μ_oε_o))

Other than that, there is no proof that c is an absolute maximum for all objects, it is however a maximum of EM waves.

Einstien then POSTULATED that the speed of light is c in all reference frames. Other consequences of relativity (infinite mass and energy) lead us to conlude that it is a maximum for all objects.

Answer 10

you can actually calculate the speed of light using a microwave oven, some chocolate and a ruler