question

[low_delta]

If you were driving your car at the speed of light, and you turned your headlights on, would the light pool up inside the housing?

Comments

[msfledermaus.livejournal.com]

Let's try it and see!!!

Here, Kev, help me put this jet engine into this VW bug!!! *oof!*

[seamusd.livejournal.com]

er, yes.

[i.livejournal.com]

wouldn't the light leaving your headlights still travel at 186000 mps relative to you, thus travelling at twice that relative to whatever your previous reference was?

or...when you turn on your headligts, aren't you travelling at 186000 mps relative to the photons?

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. The speed of light in a particular medium (like the vacuum of space) is a constant.

Re:

[i.livejournal.com]

a constant relative to what?

[vlinker.livejournal.com]

my simple caveman mind believes that your headlights would appear to operate as they do at 50mph.......and i might have to consult with A. Einstein's ghost or with Stephen Hawking to understand another point of view......

and then.....

[vlinker.livejournal.com]

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour,
it seems like a minute.
But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute,
and it's longer than any hour.
That's relativity.

- Albert Einstein

[nephychu.livejournal.com]

Hm.

So far as I know, relativity holds that matter accelerated to its ultimate velocity becomes energy.  However, if the laws of physics could be manipulated through some form of quantum tomfoolery such as a localized distortion pocket ("warp fields" in star trekkerish), and you / your car could remain intact (just as you are at sub-light speeds), the rules would change accordingly.

Depending on the berth of the distortion being created, the distribution of photons being emitted by the headlights would inevitably be immediately accumulated at the leading edge of said distortion, producing a saturating effect (and thus quickly accumulating into an explosive-flashburn-like magnitude).  So long as you remained at exact lightspeed or sub-light speed, you would be perceptably unaffected by this.  Anything your lights happened to hit, though, would be innundated with so much light it'd probably blind you to look directly at it - provided it wasn't immediately incinerated or atomizing you by running into you at lightspeed.

If you could exceed lightspeed in your little distortion, you'd have the added danger of catching up to your light emissions.  As you ran into them, the transfer of energy as they impacted the surface of your insulators and conductors would produce heat very quickly; doing the same thing to you that it'd otherwise be doing to the stuff you were previously flashburning.

If the distortion were limited to nothing but the car, or if there were no distortion and you were instead travelling at this speed through some non-relativity-compliant method (he he), the light emissions would indeed "pool up", causing a heatup at the inner-rear and sides of the housing and a gradual flashpoint formation at the front-quarter of the bulb that'd probably shatter it or burn out the filament almost immediately.

None of this stuff would be a problem for very long since cars aren't currently equipped with any methods of deflecting space dust / stray atoms, radiation, "dampening" inertia, maintaining structural integrity at high sublight / light speeds, and so on. :)

Thank you for teasing my neurons into firing again.

Heee :)

[poopinjohn.livejournal.com]

Correct-o! You can also tell idiots that if they drive fast enough, the red light will appear green to them. :D

Re: Heee :)

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

"Well, officer, I thought that the light was green, but now that you mention it, it could hvae been the blue shift."

::

[benoithq.livejournal.com]

Taillight or headlight, light travels at the speed of light in a given medium.

So it is emitted, it goes on, that's all.

If an object, well, here the car, travels at the speed of light, then for all practical purposes, it is light.
Car-headlight light, within car-as-light light.

The theoretical idea behind your example is somewhat mitigated (dimmed, hehe) by the fact that a physical body massive enough to emit light, travelling at the speed of light, would pretty much gain the mass of a good portion of the Universe in the process of nearing the speed of light, but never quite so equal to it.

Meaning, your question is excrutiatingly right on the point of all modern physics, with the nota bene that all around the real test, there would be a big-bang-like number of divine shit going on.

Btw your question is so accurate that it is a variation of what is thought of right now about the creation of the next Universe from the remnants of this one in a few trillion years.

Oh, and btw, Freekee : hi !
I missed reading you !
I have some time and less work these days.
:-)
Bye

Re: ::

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Thanks for stopping by. :-)

My question wasn't completely serious, but I appreciate your insight. I knew less about this stuff than I ever did.

[banana.livejournal.com]

Others have posted seemingly erudite answers that I can't get my head round. My answer is that you can't accelerate your car to the speed of light. IIRC the mass of your car increases as you approach the speed of light, and you get diminishing returns from putting your foot down harder.

There is a story about the darwin award going to a man with a car and a solid fuel rocket, but it appears to be false: http://www.snopes2.com/autos/dream/jato.htm