Light At The Speed Of Light All about lights properties

[curtis07 0]

What is light? Is it particles? Waves? Both? Something completely new? Nobody can really know without experiments at the speed of light. Which means we'll never know. However, I like to have my own philosophy about light.If a star moves away from us (or we move away from the star) at the speed of light, can we see it? Do we see it as a still photo, without ever changing phases? I think we wouldn't be able to see it.If we were to face away from a star and move away from it at double the speed of light, would we see it changing phases backwards? Would we see it? What if we were facing the star? I happen to think we would see the star "going back in light time" as in the former proposal.It's fun to take wild guesses, but perhaps someone else can shed some light on the subject (pardon the pun).

[Lightning73 0]

As far as we know, it takes lots of years to notice a star disappearing. Because the light has to travel so far. Furthermore, they say that the speed of light is the fastest possible. So there's no such thing as double the speed of light.

 

I like your theories though.

[innosia 1]

As far as we know, it takes lots of years to notice a star disappearing. Because the light has to travel so far. Furthermore, they say that the speed of light is the fastest possible. So there's no such thing as double the speed of light.

 

I like your theories though.

it is the fastest possible that we could create like we create a light

but it is possible for nature

[csp4.0 1]

You can't go faster than the speed of light, but technically you can but technically you aren't either... It isn't possible to go faster than the speed of light, but it IS possible to break the speed barrier of 300,000 kilometres per second...You just have to speed up the speed of light, kind of like a wind tunnel... Light is made of photons, if you compress the photons, they have to go somewhere...Anyway... If a star is travelling away from us at the speed of light (300,000 kilometres and hour), light would still radiate from it, meaning that all we would see is the star in a "suspended animation" because even though light is travelling at the speed of light, the star is moving at the speed of light meaning the light would seem to stay still... And to see the star we would have to travel along the light radiated off of the star...If we were to apply the "light tunnel" effect, and move away from the star and look back at the star, yes we would see it "phase" through time, but we wouldn't actually be moving backwards in time, becasue all we'd be doing is seeing the light radiated off the star billions of years ago... But... The thing with that idea is... We aren't actually travelling faster than light. We are speeding the light around us, meaning that we wouldn't actually see the star going backwards in time... BUT... If the start was moving away from us at the speed of light and we were travelling away from it... We would never actually see the star because... The star would be moving away, the light would seem to stand still if we wre stationary, but because we're moving away at the speed of light, the light radiated off that star would never reach us and so we would never see that star... However... If the star was moving away from us at the speed of light, and we were chasing it at the speed of light, we would see the star normally as if both us and the star were stationary. Though... If we were travelling at twice the speed of light (because of the light tunnel), chasing after the star, we would see the star's evolution sped up...Light is confusing, me writing this had me confused several times before I was pretty sure I was writing the right thing and not trying to confuse any of you who might read this because I got confused... *confused emoticon*

Edited October 3, 2008 by csp4.0 (see edit history)

[SoulEraser 0]

2 things i know about light for sure.blackholes bend light.if you travel faster than it, you can warp through time and space.

[Diffusr 0]

The whole thing about relativity theory is that the speed of light is absolute. There is no such thing as a speed any faster. So if you could travel close to the speed of light and point a torch in opposite direction, the light coming out of the torch will still be at the speed of light. i.e. you will see it leave the torch at the speed of light and an observer who were stationary at the time would also see your torchlight move at the speed of light.This sounds like an impossible situation and the math to expain it is kind of complex but basically the state of light photons in existance is "moving-at-the-speed-of-light". They don't accelerate up to that speed, they never slow down even if they change direction 180 degrees as in being reflected off a mirror surface, light just moves at a constant speed through spacetime.That's the theory anyhow.

[curtis07 0]

Oh, and one thing I almost forgot: if a light source travels faster than light, does it create a "light boom" (like a sonic boom, where waves build up like snow on the front of a snowplow and then explode)?

[room2593 0]

All of these comments are well and good until we remember one thing: The theory of relativity is still a theory.

We can't actually say: This is what would happen, for sure, in every situation, because Einstein proposed it. It's just a theory. He made all sorts of statements that we can't prove here. Until we can travel the speed of light, we can't test any of this stuff. And, according to his theory, we can't really get there in the first place. It's the perfect explanation if you think about it. It explains light but it can't be tested, so it can't be wrong.

 

However, light is not made up of particles; so it doesn't compress. Sorry curtis07, there would be no light boom. Light would act as light does. It would be like throwing two diamonds at each other. The diamonds don't compress against each other, they bounce off. If you throw them really fast, they'd just bounce off again.

 

Perhaps though...

Photons are just energy waves, right? So, if we were able to propel matter (or particles with mass...) faster than light, do you think that the energy would build on the surface of the matter until it vaporized? Bear with me here. If light normally hits matter and is absorbed, that means that it energizes the atoms and heats them up. It doesn't do that to reflective surfaces, however. It bounces off of them. So, if you were to take two balls, one of them mirrored and the other one black, and accelerate them to faster than the speed of light, the mirrored one would send light flying everywhere. But the black one would absorb all of the light and heat up. Perhaps, if it kept it's speed up fast enough, the ball would eventually vaporize into it's component atoms.

 

Maybe the light would just go right through. If it didn't have enough time to absorb into the atoms, the matter would go around it. Atoms are mostly empty space, anyhow. So if the atoms are traveling fast enough, would they pass the photons without the photons absorbing?

 

Or perhaps at light speed, the fundamental properties of mass change and nothing that we can conceive of would happen. Maybe the electrons would be stripped away from every atom, maybe every atom in the mass would lose it's ability to hold together and it would explode. We (technically) don't know what would happen.

 

These are weird questions. They probably have really simple answers that I'm not thinking about because I just woke up.

Edited October 25, 2008 by room2593 (see edit history)