if i was traveling in a vehicle at the speed of light and turned on the headlights would they work?

Question

if i was traveling in a vehicle at the speed of light and turned on the headlights would they work?

Answer 1

No. well, its absolutely impossible to travel at or faster then the speed of light, but lets pretend you can so i can actually give you an answer to the question. The speed of light is actually the ultimate speed limit to the universe, nothing can travel faster than light, so although you would expect the light to be going at twice the speed of light (you plus the speed of light)it can't because it is physically impossible for even light to travel faster than the speed of light so it would be going slower than you and not reach any path in front of you. Of course, if you turned on your headlights before you started moving, the light would be one step ahead of you.



Of course, still, nothing can go faster then the speed of light because in the formula for time dialation(time slows down for an object moving close to the speed of light) t'=t/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) where t' is the time passing for an outside observer, t is the time that passes for the object going at the high velocity, v is velocity, speed is the speed of light and ^2 is squared. (note: this formula is definately correct, it's part of einstein's theory of relativity and I've had to derive it myself for class in the past) so if v was bigger than c, you would have a number greater than one and therefore a negative number under a square root, which is impossible.

Answer 2

Assuming you could actually reach the speed of light, they would not 'work'. Light is the one thing that is not effected by addition of velocities, and therefore, you'd be traveling with the wave. It would never gain ground on you, nor you on it.

Answer 3

Trick question because of Einstin's equation E=Mc^2.

no matter can reach the speed of light because the ammount of energy required to accellerate it will always be greater than what your vehicle can produce.