Question Speed of light

[iluvspace]

If you’re in a spaceship traveling at the speed of light and you turn on the headlights, what happens?

 

[stanwaterman]

If you’re in a spaceship traveling at the speed of light and you turn on the headlights, what happens?

You can't travel at the speed of light and spaceships don't have headlights! However, hypothetically, if you were travelling just under light speed and you had headlights then they would look normal to you, illuminating things in their beam but to someone way away in front your headlights would be reduced in wavelength so would appear as uv or Xrays, not as light.

 

[Catastrophe]

Google "Einstein travelling on light wave" for the rest of this.

Einstein's thought experiment of riding a light wave was a key part of his development of special relativity:

• The experiment
  When Einstein was 16, he imagined himself riding a light wave and observing another light wave moving parallel to him.

Cat

 

[Classical Motion]

I think that a photon has two speeds. One is a common constant rate.

The other is a changing rate, a density changing rate. A density ramp.

An acceleration ramp.

Two speeds, two speeds in one. Like double mint gum.

 

[ChrisA]

If you’re in a spaceship traveling at the speed of light and you turn on the headlights, what happens?

Let's pretend for a minute that 3 is equal to 5. I know 3 is not equal to 5, but let's pretend it is for a minute. If this were true what else might be true? Well literally ANYTHING might happen when you suspend the rules of mathematics, common sense, and logic, ANYTHING can happen. Perhaps a huge pink space-unicron eats the Earth or Harry Potter-style magic is possible?

So the question is like this too. What happens if a space ship violates a basic law of physics? If you are going to suspend the rules that govern nature ANYTHING can happen. In this case we have a ship that is traveling at light speed. So it obviously did not need an infinite amount of energy to reach light speed. And as they were able to do some kind of action (flipping a light switch) time is advancing in the ship. Photons traveling at light speed would "age". Who knows what this means? Perhaps light "'decays" over time and radiation does not follow the inverse square law. The universe would be a very different place

What if division by zero gave a real result? What if Pi was 6.0? What if you could travel faster than light?

All these questions have the same answer, if they were true the universe would be a hugely different place and we would not be here to ask these questions.

But we can modify your question to make it answerable.

If you’re in a spaceship traveling at very nearly the speed of light and you turn on the headlights, what happens?

In this case, the answer is easy; "turning on the lights would be very uneventful, they would go on just like if the spacecraft were stationary. the people inside would notice no difference. The speed of light is a CONSTANT for all observers.

Those words "very nearly" change the entire meaning of the question.

 

[Classical Motion]

A photon and a flux of photons(light) has different types of velocity. Different references for the velocity. A photon is a short velocity and light has a long continuous velocity. Both of the speeds use different lengths and different durations of the velocity.

Light will always have an average velocity. And an average is NOT a constant velocity. All flux, relative motion or not, is an average. It's the character of flux. The character of multiple emitters. Multiple sources. A flux of velocities.

To achieve a constant velocity, some parameters have to be set in concrete. One of is NO relative distance changes. And the second is that the emission must be singular, not a flux.

No one has ever measure c. Only the average flux of c.

And you will never see how it truly shifts with a measurement of flux.

Every star has a different light velocity. But every star has the same RELATIVE photon velocity.

Our motion changes the measurement. That's the relative part.

Space and time do not ying yang for c. c ying yangs for space and time.

If you turn those headlights on, you will see no shine. The light can not precede you. Only follow you.