If you were standing at the rear of a craft travelling at the speed of light and you fired a pistol...?

Question

toward the front of the craft

a) would the bullet be travelling faster than the speed of light?

b) if not, would it even come out of the barrel?

Show your work. ;)

Answer 1

The state of matter of yourself, the gun, the craft, and the bullet would be altered by light speed. Therefore, the question does not apply.

Answer 2

Before you fire the gun, while the bullet is in the barrel, the bullet would be traveling at C. You are holding the gun and traveling at C, it is going the same speed you are.

The potential energy that you are storing within the gun and your self is seperate from the chemicals within the bullet that will propel it. (Which brings up another point. If you are traveling at C the slightest friction might set off the powder within the bullet prematurely.)
When you fire the gun the chemicals which propel the bullet would add the potential energy stored within and create kinetic energy that would be traveling faster then C.
You will not see the bullet leave the barrel. It will be invisible, since it is going faster then C you could not see it. But it would still be traveling at the same velocity and heading untill it hit something that would slow it down to a point below C. And at that point you would see the bullet again. It is also possible that the bullet will pass right through matter(in a different state/dimension) since it is now at a speed higher then what we know is the cap speed for all matter.

My theory on why there is dark matter and energy is because it is traveling faster then C imo. We cannot see it because it is traveling too fast. The "normal" matter that we are able to see is the matierial that has slowed down to a point slower then of C, but the rest of the Dark matter/forces are still at too high speed to be seen.

Answer 3

Not only can nothing travel faster than light, but nothing with mass can travel AT the speed of light. You could get really really really close to light speed, but you could never quite get there.

So, if you assume the craft is travelling really, really, really close to light speed, and you fire the pistol, it would look to you on the craft just as it would look to you at home on Earth. The gun would go off, and the bullet would fly off like normal.
If you measured it's speed, you would say it is travelling at a normal speed for a bullet.

Now for you on the craft, you would actually probably say that both you and the bullet were going faster than the speed of light, because time slows down for you and distances shrink in the direction of travel, and if you looked outside and measured your progress while going this fast, you'd say you were going faster than light. This is an illusion however.

Someone on Earth watching would disagree, and they would say both you and the bullet were travelling very very very close to the speed of light. With the bullet travelling slightly closer to the speed of light.

Answer 4

The rules of relativity say no material object can be going at the speed of light, but in theory you could be going 1 inch per hour less than the speed of light. If you did that, here is what would happen. You would see the bullet leave the gun at the speed of a normal bullet being fired, which is hundreds of miles per hour. But a person standing still as you passed at almost the speed of light would see your bullet leaving the gun barrel at less than one inch per hour so that the bullet itself was still passing that stationary person at less than the speed of light. In other words that stationary person would see the same bullet leave the same gun at a different speed than you do. That is because time and space are distorted for you because you are moving so fast. This is what relativity predicts. Believe it or not.

EDIT: "I don't think so" in his answer below is saying exactly the same thing I am in slightly different words. I give him a thumbs up!

Answer 5

The space craft and bullet are controlled by a time restriction.
The space craft is existing in any point in space for a quantum second that can't be divided.
The bullet would have to attempt to divide an indivisible time tick that could then not exist,so no additional speed could be added to the system.

Answer 6

because time is not a constant, but relative to the observer, to a person on the craft travelling it would appear to be, though to an observer on the outside, both would appear to be doing relatively the same speed. and the laws of physics at the speed of light do change so dramatically as to make your experiment most impossible.
i know, you are asking how is time relative to your question. well, try describing the rate at which the bullet, or the craft for that matter, is traveling...see number/time unit

Answer 7

That is a VERY good question...for once you didnt ask the typical "what if i shone light when im travelling at the speed of light". Umm...hmm...well...since a bullet is not light and is not a constant and obeys the frame of reference laws...I think it will travel faster than the speed of light....but of course this experiment is physically impossible....but then again...that would also break the rule stating that nothing can travel faster than c.

Answer 8

to even think about traveling at the speed of light, you would have to localize space. anything that happened in that space would be only in reference to things in that frame of reference. scientists say that the universe is expanding faster than light right? well pick any spot in the universe, and everything seems to move away from it. if that part of the universe is "moving" faster than light, then they would experience time differently. this isn't the case though, because that part of the universe isn't actually moving. yes it is moving away from us, but for all we know, we could be moving away from them. you would have to localize space so that anything in your reference of time would be different than any other reference of time. if this is the case, then the bullet would travel as fast as a bullet, not the speed of the bullet + the speed of light.

NOW: pretend that it is indeed possible to travel the speed of light without localizing space. when things approach the speed of light, they become more massive. at the speed of light, an object becomes infinitely massive. if something is infinitely massive, it would require and infinite force to overcome inertia. I doubt that your gun can produce an infinite force =)

Answer 9

The answer is that the bullet would be moving near the speed of light, and you'd be moving near the speed of light, but neither of you would be moving faster than the speed of light, instead the bullet would be experiencing time differently than you would be. Time would be passing slower fromn the bullet's point of veiw than it would be from your point of view. Also, as an object approaches the speed of light it gets harder and harder to accelerate that object, so you'd have to have a special magical gun to even attempt the experiment.

Answer 10

the bullet would travel the normal rate of fire minus the speed of light. example if you are traveling 55 mph facing backwards and shot a gun the bullet would travel 55 mph faster than standing still