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by dealer on December 15th, 2003

dealer

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You are in a space ship traveling at the speed of light. You turn on the headlights. What happens to that light?

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  • by Skipps on January 9th, 2005

    Skipps

    Well, one of Einstein's proven theories is the speed of light is constant. I'm pretty sure that's it. The example goes as following (I'll update this when I get my book back from school); There is 1 stationary light at Point B and another on a train moving near 100Km/hour at Point A. There is a light detector of some sort at Point C. Both the stationary light and the light on the train turn on when the train reaches Point B. Both rays/beams (what ever you may call it) reach Point C at exactly the same moment/time. That was the experiment used at that time.

    So my answer for this is the light will stay at the object emitting the light on the spaceship if the light is shining directly infront of it. If the light was shining at an angle either away or towards the center of the ship at a very small angle (2 degrees or so), I suspect that the light will travel sideways but still remain at the same point that the light bulb is at. If it was at a larger angle (15 or 30 degrees), my theory is the light will travel sideways and fall behind, though my theory may be wrong.

    But keep in mind, as the others have stated oh so many times, that the faster an object moves, the more forces act upon it. So to reach a faster speed, more energy is needed to keep the speed up. As the object reaches near light speed, so many forces/so much force acts upon it that the object will slow down, so an infinite amount of energy is needed to maintain the objects light speed.

    Also, as I have heard recently...
    There is a freezer so cold that even light is slowed down (though only a small amount). Crazy, eh?

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