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To: r_barton
r_barton said: "If you are traveling the speed of light in your car and turn on the headlights, do they light up anything? ;-)"

Basically, yes.

A real car, consisting of a certain amount of mass, would require an infinite amount of energy to attain that speed.

Slightly more realistically, let's assume that the car is traveling at 99 percent of the speed of light. Then imagine that a person at a distance in front of the car of one light year detects the light coming from the headlights.

Although the light would probably be very dim, the observer would measure the photons as having a speed of 300 million meters per second. He would also detect a pronounced blue-shift in the frequency of the light. Each photon would carry a great deal of energy; much more than would be measured by an observer moving with the car.

Finally, after 3.65 days of observing this unusual light, the observer would be run over by an extremely fast moving car.

65 posted on 05/19/2016 3:34:25 PM PDT by William Tell
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To: William Tell

Good answer to the car question.


80 posted on 05/22/2016 6:32:03 AM PDT by samtheman (Trump For America.)
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