The Speed of Light

kind of hard to refute that one there Dulcimer since of course we already know E=MC^2 is the premise that allows for the calculation of thermo nuclear reactions.

to truly travel at the speed of light you must have no mass, like a photon.


Cherenkov Effect

Originally posted by Dulcimer
you can have mass and travel at the speed of light

find me a source that says you cant

umm, WE know that but apparently now you do too since you just contradicted yourself by now saying to truely travel at the speed of light you must have no mass like a photon.

Yupe. That is what I already said that this topic is mute because you can not "be" a thing and travel at the speed of light therefore you can not have a "thing" that also emits light while travelling at the speed of light.

But for the sake of the discussion IF it was possible to still exist in a mass form and travel at the speed of light and fire a gun or a light mean what the hypothetical result would be.

nothing i said was wrong. you can have mass and travel at the speed of light

Cherenkov Effect !

Originally posted by Dulcimer
nothing i said was wrong. you can have mass and travel at the speed of light

Cherenkov Effect !

We're talking about c, the speed of light in a vaccuum, just less than 300,000km/s. A particle accelerated at 0.8c, while the speed of light is 0.75c, is not what we're looking for. We're talking about 1c, not any technical things like the Cherenkov effect.

Originally posted by ChemicalLaser
This answer to this question and many like it are explained in detail in any college-level modern physics textbook, and probably covered in some advanced HS physics texts. Look in the chapter(s) on relativity.

yes. i think you would see the light.

Sigh....when people talk about speed of light, they mean c, speed of light in a vacuum. No one really cares if you know what the Cherenkov effect is...

It is an interesting question.

While I have little proof on my answer here is what I believe what would happen:

When you turn the headlights on, you will not see anything. Since you are traveling at the same speeds, you would not see the lights on the road. This is becuase both objects (the light and car) are traveling at the same speed. It seems quite simple, almost too simple.

I have quite a bit of confidence in my theory, though I am not a master in physics yet.

It certainly sounds like an SAT problem!

Originally posted by Dulcimer
you can have mass and travel at the speed of light

find me a source that says you cant

www.fourmilab.ch...

10. Dynamics of the Slowly Accelerated Electron
" "

Whenever the object's velocity is equal to c, or the speed of light, the functions become undefined.

[edit on 24-4-2005 by Aether]

The speed of light is constant, it doesn't matter if it is emitted from a moving object or a stationary one. It stills remains 300,00km/s.

Both the person in the car and an observer outside would both measure the beam of light travelling at the speed of light.

I think the observer would observe the cars length to be 0 (length contraction) and the time onboard the car to stop (time slows as you reach speed of light, this is only seen by the observer). The person in the car would observer the cars length and time not to have changed.

Also i once read something that said the light frequencies would be shifted so the light would become ultra-violet

Depends if you turn on the lights before or after you reach the speed of light. Your speed and the speed of light emitted from the lamps would be the same as long as you're driving your uber-car in a vacuum.

Ooops. Sorry. I don't know how I missed MysticalUnicorn's post.

I guess I should throw in my theory since everyone's seems to not agree on precise detail. The firing the gun theory is great because what happens when the bullet leaves the barell? Will it simply travel at the speed of light or will the object you are on being going at such a high rate of speed that the bullet will simple 'lose the race' and find itself lodged in your brain.
If we take Einstein's theory of light travel (which I think we should, since he was an OK scientist), you won't be able to see the light you shine in front of you, because that would mean traveling realitive to the object the flash light would be traveling faster than the object, which would mean it is going faster than the speed of light: simply impossible.

I look at it this way: You are on a magic carpet going Mach 1.7, and you fire a bullet. The bullet's escape velocity is exactly the same as that of the carpets velocity, say Mach 1.7. Would the bullet ever leave the confines of the carpet? Why or why not?

Admittedly I haven't read all of the posts of this thread, because many of them had just outright wrong information. So I'm going to post the answer here for you:

If you were going the speed of light in your car, and you turned on the headlights, the speed at which light would come out is NECESSARILY the constant (c) of the speed of light. Therefore it would not come out at all, but would stay in place.

Another question this brings up, however, is whether you're in the car going the speed of light and you shoot off a gun. That will be s+r=t, or (s)peed you're going + (r)ate the bullet comes out = the (t)otal speed of the bullet. This, however, cannot be done. It's just physically impossible.

The question above is just one of those things we as humans like to pose for absolutely no reason and then call them paradoxes even though it's logically impossible. It's like Zeno's paradox.. there's no such thing, but rather is just a jumbled up human perception.

Hope that somehow helps you.