Would a lightbulb be able to burn out in space?
89866
air is not necessary for a lightbulb to burn. but due to the zero atmosphere it would most likely explode unless encased in a pressurized vessel.
373232
No, A BIG NO. even on outer space, the gravity is NOT zero. It is very near to Zero (maybe like 0.0000000000000000000001 or something), but never exactly zero. This is because gravity has a range of infinite, i.e. the effect of gravity reaches to every place in the universe and even more. However, it is also known that gravity's power is inverse square to the range (S/4*pi*a_huge_distance^2 = almost 0, but never exactly 0, unless S=0 which means there is no gravity source), thus after a certain distance, the effect of the gravity is negligible and won't affect almost anything. BUT it is not zero. There is no point in space that have completely zero gravity, if there is at least one gravity source in that space, even if the gravity source is placed very far away from that point or even if the gravity's power is very small.\n\nThe gravity is similar to light in this way of infinite range. If you fire an ideal laser (one that would not spread out even minutely after great distances), and you stand on a very far away point from the laser, you'd still be able to be pointed by the laser. Light is also a force that have an infinite distance. Light however, is not exactly the same as gravity.
275947
If its sealed so that water cant reach the electrical circuit, then sure.  Lightbulbs are used underwater all the time for photography and filming.
193299
It would take infinite energy to accelerate you and your light fixture to the exact speed of light which would thus be impossible.  However, as you approach the speed of light, at ever greater fuel expenditure, your rocket ship would shrink in the direction of travel and you would become a "pancake" but not be aware of it.  When you turn on your light, the photons emitted straight ahead would travel at the speed of light, c.  Photons always travel at the speed of light in a vacuum.  it is not like shooting bullets ahead from a fighter plane where muzzle velocity is added to the speed of the plane.  Although Einstein's theories of relativity do apply to the plane and bullets as well as photons, the effects are almost undetectable at the very low velocities we ordinarily experience on earth.
37
So the answer to your specific question is 'no'.  The problem is that if the container shines, it means that light and energy is being lost and will eventually run out.  There are materials that will glow for a long time due to radioactive decay or via chemical processes, but all of these are using up their 'fuel' in the process and will eventually run out.\nSome radioactive substances have a pretty long half-life and will appear to glow steadily without much decay over the scale of a human lifetime.\nNow, to get more generalized... it is possible to trap light in a container that doesn't shine. Scientists have been able to free light in its place using supercooled clouds of sodium which are naturally opaque, but can temporarily transmit light when altered via a laser beam.  If the laser is shut off, a light beam that is passing through the cloud will be temporarily frozen in place.  Australian scientists have recently been able to extend this interaction to be nearly as long as a second.\nOnce the laser is reintroduced the beam is recovered and continues on its way.  Now all this is a little debatable, since the photons actually get temporarily swallowed up by the material.  The photons that come out afterwards have the same configuration and quantum state as what went in, but whether they are exactly the same photons is more of a question for philosophy than for physics.
655580
no, it is infared light, which is lower energy than regular light. plus it is a very weak, un focused siganl that only transmits for an instant.
941040
I believe the light bulb would light up the sphere, like a lamp shade, You'd see the light but not the light bulb. The metal particles that are in a one sided mirror allow some light to come through.
555650
I suppose it would be possible in theory. You would need an insanely bright source to project anything easily visible from Earth though. Why would you even want to do that?
649572
GREAT IDEA ! EVENTUALLY , IF THIS RIDICULOUS IDEA WERE EVEN POSSIBLE , WE COULD LIVE ON A GLOWING EMBER SIMILAR TO OUR SUN . WOULDN'T THAT BE GREAT ?!!?
996396
Yes, but it would be expensive to build the equipment and incredibly dangerous - imagine if the laser was hit by a small bit of space debris and the laser light moved - it would be like dropping a fire-bomb.  \n\nFar better to harvest the natural sunlight when it reaches the earth!
482626
It is theoretically possible, but very, very, very difficult!\nL2 is roughly 1,500,00 km (or a million miles) from the earth, on the far side from the sun.  So when the moon is on the sun side of the earth, with it's dark face toward the earth (a new moon), the distance from the L2 point to the moon would be 1.5M km (to earth), plus 375,000 km  (to the moon), then bounce back to earth, for a total of 2.25 million km (or 1.5M miles).  Since the moon only reflects about 1/10 of the light that hits it (its albedo is .12), the light source at L2 would have to be 10 times as powerful as if you were reflecting off a mirror (or 6-8 times what it would be off a good screen).\n So let's figure how powerful that light would have to be.  Let's say that you want to just barely be able to see this projection, say, about as well as you could see a candle on a perfectly dark night at a distance of a kilometer. Well, light power varies inversely as the square of the distance.  So (simplifying a lot to just get a rough idea) that light would have to be 2.25M, squared, times 10 (for the moon's reflectivity) candlepower to hit your eye with that same power.  So you'd need a light of 50,625,000,000,000,000,000 candlepower.  By one account, the most powerful light currently existing on earth is about 1,000,000,000 (one billion) candlepower.  \n I've simplified quite a bit; you could reduce the power requirements many orders of magnitude by focusing the beam or using a laser, but the answer still comes out to be that you'd need a light millions of times more powerful than the brightest lighthouse.  And you'll need thousands of square kilometers of solar cells to power this super projector.  And thousands of rockets to get all this equipment out to L2!\n\n So to answer your question - is it THEORETICALLY possible?  Sure!  But there is a huge world of difference between theory and practical application on this one!
350726
If you could travel at the speed of light in your space ship (which you can't) and turned on the headlights the light would travel away from your ship at the speed of light. The speed of light is invariant -- not affected by the speed of its source.
847168
They are light which has obvious advantages, but they do not do well in cycling temperatures and have a lifetime that is independent of how often they cycle. As such they would not be useful for any long life (> a year or two) space application (which most are since launch costs are so large), though I suppose a system that would need to cycle the batteries frequently (say periodic bursts of power fairly often) they might be useful.\n\nI guess they would be useful in a launcher because of the weight savings.\n\nThey are pretty new to the flight qualified scene and I don't know much about them so the above is speculation.
388236
try Hydrogen, actually any thing can burn if the temperature is high enough, now consider that in a star the pressure is so high due to the immense amount of gravity that friction at the molecular level heats it up to enormous temperatures, like the core of the sun is millions of degree, that's very hot, plus in the core of most stars, there is Nuclear fusion taking place which turns the Hydrogen into Helium, it is that nuclear fusion that gives the sun and most stars all of its energy.\n\nand dont worry the sun wont run out of Hydrogen to burn for an estimated 4-5 billion years, so we'r not going to be left in the dark anytime soon.
580324
HAHAHAH ARE YOU TRYING TO TEST US?\n\nLight is a form of electromagnetic radiation: i.e. it has oscillating electric(E) and magnetic(B) fields that travel through  space at speed c with the same frequency and wavelength.\nrotational energy of light if I am not worng...I like that sh.t!!good question\nRotational energy level gaps typically\n\n \n\nDE = 10^-23 J\n\nTherefore n = 1.5 x 10^10 s^-1
574734
Something very close to it already exists:  Ion drive.  This uses charged xenon particles as its propellant.  The acceleration is very low, but it is much more efficient than chemical rockets.  NASA has already put it to practical use with their Deep Space 1 probe, and will use it again with their Helium 3 probe.\n\nOf course, that's still a mass-reaction drive.  A rather exotic one, but still...\n\nOne way of using light for propulsion is with a "solar sail," which The Planetary Society tried to test with its Cosmos-1 mission.  Unfortunately, the probe was lost in a launch failure.  They want to try again, though; you might want to write to them about your idea.
115426
Yes, yes, yes, yes..!!! Scientists have stopped light.\n\nThe details of when, where and how are here ---\nhttp://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/27Mar_stoplight.htm\n\nhttp://physicsweb.org/articles/world/14/9/8