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< Esato Forum Index > General discussions > Non mobile discussion > A Might-be-unsolveable-question About Light Bookmark topic

It has been seven years since I studied quantum mechanics so don't take this as anything but my own opinion.

If you were travelling at the speed of light (we'll ignore the various problems associated with that) and turned on your headlights you would probably see them come on. The light from your headlights would also be travelling at the speed of light and it's velocity would not be determined by the velocity of the object producing the light since the speed of light is a constant.

For example, if you were to fire a cannon ball from a big powerful cannon and from a small weaker cannon the velocity of the cannon ball would be different because each cannon could provide the ball with more energy. If we had a ball of light it would have the same velocity no matter which cannon was used because it always travels at the same speed. (I'm simplifying here, light can be slowed down, but I am assuming we are using the speed of light in a vacuum here.)

I'm not sure if this applies if one were travelling at light speed, but close to light speed one would see light shifted and space and time would become distorted. To use the analogy of the car, if you looked through the rear window at near light speed you would see light redshifted, that is it would appear red and objects would appear closer to you. Looking out the windscreen light would be blueshifted so that it appeared blue, violet, etc and objects would look further away from you.

So to answer your question you might see beams of blue/violet light coming from the headlights, but I'm not entirely sure.

_________________
"I may be drunk my dear woman, but in the morning I will be sober, and you will still be ugly." WSC

[ This Message was edited by: scotsboyuk on 2007-08-20 23:34 ]
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Posted: 2007-08-21 00:33:17
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