when a vehicle reaches the speed of light what happens when you turn the headlamps on.?
79821
Simple answer is NOTHING.  This is the explaination:  When you are traveling in a car at 70 MPH and there is a bug flying around in the car (say 0.5MPH), the bug is also traveling at 70 MPH ().5MPH can be ignored as bug is flying around in the car with null effect on the speed).  This is the part of theory of relativity.  Now let's see our car is traveling at the sped of light, when you turn the light on, the rays are traveling at the same spped and you see no effect of light (i.e. still dark-if driving at night).  If you just slow down at little (say 5%) then you will see light just ahead of the car and same applies as if you spped up the car slightly, it will be still dar and you may see back of the car lit (light left behind) for having lheadights in the front.
670589
Forever and ever.\nIt may get dimmer, but that is from the spreading of the light.  The photons will travel until they collide with something.
302939
are you referring to after you turn the vehicle off ?\ni know my car will keep the headlights on for 30 seconds after it's turned off if i turn the headlights off AFTER the car has been shut off.
1090971
Physics. Tasty, tasty physics.\n\nIt occours for the same reason a car rushing by you seems to change sound. To a stationary observer, the frequency (pitch) of the soundwaves made by the car as it drives away will decrease, so the pitch in your ear gets lower and lower as the car gets further and further from your location.\n\nSounds waves and light waves work much the same way - I used the car example to help with visualization. :3 It's all the Doppler Effect in action.\n\nSo, to answer your questions...\n\nIf space itself were not expanding, but galazies were moving away from each other, yes, redshift would still occour, since it's the light sources that matter, not the size of what they're contained in. If the stars are moving away, you will experience redshift looking at them.\n\nLight does indeed travel at a constant speed, but you've got the second part wrong. Yes, the energy, wavelength, and frequency changes. But all waves in a single medium (IE space) will have the same speed.\n\nTake a look at the equation v = lamba (f), which in words is velocity of the wave equals the wavelength times the frequency. If the wavelength doubles, frequency will halve, and velocity remains the same.
641394
As weird as it sounds, the theory of relativity says that if you are in a car traveling at 200,000,000 m/s with the headlights on, then the light from those headlights will pass a person standing still at 299,792,458 m/s and not 499,792,458 m/s. And if that stationary person shines a light at your car, you will see his light approaching you at 299,792,458 m/s and not 499,792,458 m/s.\n\nThe theory is so weird that numerous scientists have done numerous experiments to test it. The most famous of these experiments is the Michelson-Morley Experiment. All experiments have confirmed that this strange prediction of relativity is true.\n\nBelieve it or not!
293728
At the speed of light you gain infinite mass so the light beam from a headlight must go faster than light to escape the headlight it's self.If the beam could be a higher energy of light like gamma rays and if you could see a gamma ray which human eyes can't then maybe you'd see something. The question is will they come on,yes because\nthe electricity will flow through the filament of the bulb so it's on but can you tell by eye?No,because it would take forever for the light to reach your eye at equal speeds.
591715
No. First, matter can't get to the speed of light because it would be infinitly massive and would take an infinite amount of energy to do it so the question starts out with a bad premiss.\n\nHowever, if a plane were traveling at half the speed of light and turned on it's headlights, they would be going the speed of light to him and the speed of light for someone on the ground watching. You see the speed of light is constant for all observers in a non-Newtonian reference frame.
373426
Well, since, as stated before, darkness is the absence of light, it travels at the exact speed of light in a given medium. For example, if you turn a light on in a darkened room, it gets bright very quickly (exactly how quickly will depend on the type of light bulb or the colour of the light you use), but when you turn it off, it gets dark at the same rate. Though darkness isn't something that really "travels", what you're measuring is how fast light dissipates, which is at the speed of light!
570639
As the speed of light is approached time slows.\nThis is given by the formula Sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) where\nv=velocity\nc=speed of light\n\nAt the speed of light time stops Sqrt(0) = 0\n\nFaster than the speed v exceeds c so v/c >1\n\nsqrt of a negative is imaginary.\n\nThe only thing you can see when traveling faster than a light is a snuffleupagus. (Because their IMAGINARY. or least they used to be back in the good old days.)
361230
In this imaginary situation, you will still see your headlights working the same way as they normally do. Without going into tricky mathematics, just recall the fundamental postulate of special relativity: \nThe speed of light is CONSTANT in all inertial frames of references (considering the same medium). \nSo, the speed of light will still be the same in the frame of reference attached to your vehical, which is an inertial frame, because it is moving with the (uniform) speed of light!
1084318
Actually, the way modern physicists think of it, the question doesn’t quite make sense.  The problem is the “traveling at the speed of light” part, because one of the conclusions of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is that nothing can travel that fast.\n\nInterestingly, though, its was consideration of a similar question that started Einstein down the path toward relativity… Light is best described by Maxwell’s Equations, which predict that any experiement will measure same speed for light in a vacuum.  When Einstein thought about traveling at the speed of light, he realized that there must be a problem.  In fact, Maxwell’s Equations don’t allow for a “standing wave” solution, which is what a light wave would look like if you were traveling at the speed of light. \n\nSo Einsten took things back to basics, which is what he was good at.  Let’s start with what he actually said… His Special Theory of Relativity started with two postulates (or assumptions): 1) that the laws of physics are observed to be the same in any non-accelerated “reference frame” and 2) that the speed of light (c) is observed to be the same for all observers.\n\nThe first assumption basically says that as long as you’re traveling at a constant speed, all your experiments will give the same results.  That seems reasonable.  But the thing about the speed of light always being the same sounds a little odd: the Michelson-Morley experiment (and others) had detected no change in the speed of light when measured from a moving frame of reference, however, and as I already mentioned, Maxwell’s Equations yield a specific value for the velocity of light.\n\nStarting from there, Einstein worked out how to add velocities together, and it comes out to be not simple addition, but a fraction that never gets larger than c. Basically, what happens is that the measurement of time and distance changes, so a physical object (e.g., a spaceship) can never achieve lightspeed.\n\nSo”  That’s a long-winded way of saying that your headlights themselves can’t travel at the speed of light.  If we want to think about them traveling very, very close to the speed of light, however, we realize that the light they emit still travels at lightspeed (as measured by the fast-moving headlights themselves), so they stil work the same way headlights would work on a car traveling much slower.\n\n\nRyan Wyatt\nRose Center for Earth & Space\nNew York, New York
236873
According to Einsteinian theory, yes, you would see the light.  Einstein postulates that the speed of light is relative to the viewer.  If you were travelling at the speed of light and turned on a flashlight, the light traveling out of the flash light would be traveling away from you at the speed of light relative to you.
61325
the Flash @ speed of light ;)
321687
OK, to answer this question, we first have to make a few important assumptions, otherwise the question is meaningless.\nFirst, we have to assume that you can accelerate your car to the speed of light....this is not actually possible since it would have an infinfity mass and thius take an infinite amount of energy to achiece.  Secondly, wehave to assume that at the speed of light, your head lights will opperate noramlly (i.e. you turn them on and light shines out) due to [for reasons beyond the scope of this answer] the way head lights actually work.\n\nI would also like to preface my answer with say that traveling AT the speed of light is much different than traveling just UNDER the speed of light.\n\nOne VERY important thing to remember is that in ALL frames of reference, the speed of light is constant.\nNo matter who is watching the light travel and measuring its speed, it will always come out to be the exact some value, 299,792,458 m/s exactly.\n\nWhen you, inside your car traveling at the speed of light (with respect to some "stationary" observer), swtich on your head lights and look out the wind shield, you WILL see light traveling away from you at the speed of light.\n\nIf this "stationary" observer (by which I mean a someone who you are traveling past at the speed of light) watches all this happen, both you and the light are still traveling at the same speed in his reference frame....the speed of light.\n\nSo the answer depends on who's frame of reference your talking about.  From your point of view, yes, you would see the light traveling away from you at the speed of light as if nothing was out of the ordinary.\nFrom the "Stationary" person's reference frame, you and the light would be keeping up with eachother, neither moving infront or falling behind the other one...tied.
228021
Some people would argue the logic of a space craft having headlights at all, others might find fault in the fact that, physically, nothing with mass can ever travel at the speed of light.  But lets put that aside.\n\nThe speed of light is constant in any frame of reference, no matter who is "watching" it, it always travels with respect to them at the speed of light (c).\n\nIf you are in a space ship already traveling at the speed of light [with respect to some outside observer], when you turn on the headlights, the light will move away from you at the speed of light.\nIf some outside observer (who you are flying past at the speed of light) watches all this, they would, too, see the light travel at c with respect to them.  But since you and the light are traveling both at the speed of light with respect to the observer, you and the light would be keeping up with eachother.
647799
You can't go at the speed of light. It's a theorical limit, so it's unreacheable. Only the light can reach it.\n\nIf C is the speed of light, the fastest you can get is C*0.999999999... (insert as many '9' as you want). When you turn on the headlights, they will be somewhat faster: they'll reach the speed of light.
56541
You would be in a different universe than you are now, because the laws of our universe say that a massive object can't go faster than the speed of light (or even as fast).\n\nAlso, if you changed the question to "...1 mile per hour less than the speed of light", you would have to specify "relative to ..." (what?)  And then you would have to say, what would happen as observed by (whom?).  In this question, relative to you, the headlights would turn on and you would be able to see things 186,000 miles ahead of you (as you measure miles) within 1 second (as you measured seconds) .  Relative to the observer that thought you were moving 1 mile per hour less than the speed of light - assuming you were moving toward the observer - you would get to him or her just a tiny fraction of a second after he/she saw the headlights turned on.  Your measurement of the speed of light would be consistent, but your measurments of time and distance would be very different.