What will happen??

[Deaf Bob]

Train tracks with mirrors between the rails.
Engine capable of 185,000 ft per sec+... (speed of light)
If you shine a flashlight straight down, the beam bounces off the mirrors into your face..
IF train goes faster, will the light beam start to angle backwards? Or will it still flash into your face?

Remember.. Speed of light...

Oops. Read 186,000 miles per sec..
Shows how slow I really am.. Thanks Thump..

[oldsman496]

Train tracks with mirrors between the rails.
Engine capable of 185,000 ft per sec+... (speed of light)
If you shine a flashlight straight down, the beam bounces off the mirrors into your face..
IF train goes faster, will the light beam start to angle backwards? Or will it still flash into your face?

Remember.. Speed of light...

Hypothetically of course... I think it would not be visible. as you would be going faster than it was, it would be behind you and the light could not reach your retinas. if you had fired a laser prior to getting to the speed of light you may be able to 'pass-up' the end of the beam though...........

but of course as we all know. It would take more than infinite mass and energy to get an engine to go faster than light according to that Einstein guy.... an thats simply CRAZY

[Deaf Bob]

But isnt the beam going to the mirrors still traveling that set speed?

[A/Fuel]

Would this fall under the same theory as trying to hit a road sign with a beer bottle from a moving car?

[oletrux4evr]

I'm not sure, but I'd like to be able to weld thin stuff better with my mig........I can burn a hole at the speed of heat........

[BBR]

This sounds like the old debate we had in college about headlights on the starship Enterprise. Lol

[Thumpin455]

Its 186,000 miles per second... not feet per second. Just a small difference there. Well you have the red and blue shift in light, like the Doppler effect with sound, but that is something else entirely. It just means that coming towards you the light will be blue, and going away it will be red.

As far as the light doing anything freaky, math might show it doing something else, but it should bounce off mirrors just like it normally does. Its hard to say since we haven't gone that fast, and our minds are wired to understand low speed stuff, as in not much more than 30 mph, but we can comprehend it with a bit more effort.

If the source is traveling at a certain speed, then it will just add to the speed of the particle 'fired' from it. Sort of like how the SR71 can fly faster than some cannon shells. Had a roommate in the AF tell me it couldn't fire the gun because the rounds wouldn't leave the barrel due to the speed, or it would outrun the shells and shoot itself down. That doesn't make sense, because you can throw a baseball inside a 747 going 500 mph and it will travel vs the ground at whatever velocity you can throw it plus the 500mph. The ball doesn't go backwards once you, the plane, and the ball have all reached cruise velocity. The same thing happens in a truck or bus going 100mph, and if you can throw a baseball at 100mph, it is traveling 200mph in relation to the earth, but not to the truck where it is only 100mph.

Its not the speed that is the issue in the atmosphere, its friction that would make a difference, but that isn't the question. If a gun is traveling at 3000ft/sec and it has a muzzle velocity of 3000ft/sec, the rounds will leave the muzzle at 6000ft/sec in relation to the earth, but only at 3000ft/sec in relation to the muzzle.

Light emitted from a moving object will still have the same "muzzle velocity" as it normally would, but with the added velocity of the source. This doesn't account for relativity, and I am not going to do the math to find out how much it will vary. To me the main reason we cant reach light speed is we don't have anything that will propel us that fast. Nothing has enough thrust to move us at that velocity, except maybe some sort of Ion drive that would take decades to even come close to that speed... provided its in the vacuum of space so there is very little friction, and you could use gravity wells to slingshot yourself to higher velocity.

Traveling at a fraction of light speed within the atmosphere will produce so much friction that you would simply burn up. The previously mentioned SR71 has a titanium skin that expands something like 3 feet at speed due to being heated by friction at high altitudes. It can only travel that fast at higher altitudes due to thinner air, at sea level it will be much slower and burn lots more fuel. Just an after thought on high velocities and how our minds tend to work.

[Barry Donovan]

faster than light is the realm carrying it.

people are stupid.

the realm that carries light watches it go by...

our eyes do that too don't they.

I get mad at this stuff.

..and the expanding universe is us fading away.

[pdub]

So then, by the baseball and gun round with the platform already-at-speed hypothesis, the light that comes out of the headlights on the spaceship going the speed of light would simply be going twice the speed of light? That's some haulin' ass light right there. And it would get younger so fast that it would disappear?

[Scott Liggett]

This sounds like the old debate we had in college about headlights on the starship Enterprise. Lol

Some of.my Trekky dorm buddies argued over how the guys in red shirts were targets by all the aliens based on the theory that no matter what light spectrum the aliens' sight was based in their red shirts still were the bright and attracted attention. Hence, there was at least one dead red shirt before the opening credits. I usually cracked open a beer I smuggled into the dorm when these geek arguments popped up.

[Thumpin455]

Ive often wondered about relativity, mass increasing as speed increase, and of course going ahead in time or back a bit like you could near a black hole, and how it all fits with Heisenberg Principle. I am not a physicist, and not very good at maths with Greek letters, so I cant tell if Einstein was just viewing things from a perspective that made it appear that mass increased or if the energy required to change its direction increased exponentially, such as it does with air pressure/drag over 140mph.

Regardless, velocity is very interesting, especially how it relates to distance and time.

[pdub]

...I cant tell if Einstein was just viewing things from a perspective that made it appear that mass increased or if the energy required to change its direction increased exponentially, such as it does with air pressure/drag over 140mph.

140 mph must be the magic number, because that's how fast Red was going when to my surprise he said, "That's IT peewee, I'm slowing down." And that was a good thing, Red kept Keith Turk from throwing us off of the property. You gotta love a speed limiter you never knew you had, at least that one time anyway.

[Caveman Tony]

But will I have to reset my watch if I accelerate that fast? I don't want the ion drive or the dilithium crystals in the Enterprise to F-up my quartz Timex dude.

[Cyclone03]

I have no ideas if light and mirrors reflect the speed of light in a curve or not........but,

Like most of us AF flight line types we love to talk SR71. I have worked with 2 former mechanics of the Black Bird,one Crew Chief,the other Electrician. The CC was still under TS Clearence rules so could not talk much but BS, but the Electrician had been cleared of some(most) but not all the good stuff. The Top Speed is still listed as "Greater than Mach 3" no real topspeed has been given. Its fun to say it cant fire weapons because it will shoot itself down so a lot of what ifs come from that. "If" it fires a bullet,not a rocket,the bullet leaves the barrel at xfeet per secound plus Mach whatever the SR is going,the bullet then starts to slow,air friction,gravity starts to act on it and it starts to arc down and the SR passes the bullet and flys on,unless the SR runs into the bullet from behind,like how we say the T6 TexanII (what I work on now) is so slow migrating ducks qauck at it from behind to get out of the way. Now if it fired a rocket with an ignition delay the rocket could drop off lag behind and a fraction of a secound later light then because it still is starting out at a no thrust speed of "closer to SR Mach whatever" when the thrust comes on it maybe could catch the SR and shot it down,unless the SR pilot moved the throttle another 1/8 up.......see fun what ifs.

[Beagle]

we had this question in Junior High, but there was this unbelievably hot cheerleader that sat behind me. Short version - thunderstruck, I could barely remember my name. haha.