If you were travelling faster than the speed of light, would your headlight beam illuminate in front of you?
970195
This is one of the oldest questions in the world, after Einstein came out with his special relativity.  The answer is that no matter how fast you are going, your headlight beam is STILL shining ahead at the speed of light. This is exactly what the equations say, and it works.  If it wasn't true, then all the giant particle smashers in the world costing billions of dollars wouldn't even work.
678688
It's not a yes or no question.\n\nCan one travel faster than the speed of light?  No.\n\nCan objects be moving away from each other at a relative rate faster than the speed of light?  Yes.\n\nMeditate upon this, and you may become enlighted, or enspeeded, or something...
644825
According to Special Relativity Theory, when you are transporting a mass at a speed near lightspeed, the energy needed to increase your speed rises to infinity. We can't provide the system with enough energy to reach the light of speed.\n\nEnergy, though, can travel at the speed of light because it has no mass. If we could transform a mass in energy (remember: E = m c^2) and re-create it at destination, travelling at lightspeed would be possible.\n\nBut, as Dark Helmet said, speed of light is too slow. We need ludicrous speed!
532772
nothing but light can travel at light speed.  the faster you go, the more energy it requires to accelerate.  at speeds that are close to the speed of light, you would need what is basically an infinite amount of power to accelate.  with current technology, it is impossible.  the only reason light can travel that fast, is because when it is created it is already traveling that fast.  it doesnt have to accelerate.
33169
IF YOU WERE GOING AT THE SPEED OF A BULLET,YOU WOULD BE RIGHT NEXT TO IT AT SPEED O. THE SAME WITH LIGHT, IF YOU WERE GOING THE SPEED OF LIGHT IN YOUR CAR (LET'S SAY )YOU WOULD SEE THE LIGHT ON,BUT TO SEE THE LIGHT OFF YOU MUST BE GOING FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT.SO THEN YOU SEE THE LIGHT ON AT THE SAME SPEED THE CAR IS GOING.
938852
The driver cannot see the lighting of the lights on the road as teh car will be travelling at the same speed of light. The car will be on the same point of the road where the light is falling. Because the car will travel that distance along with light which is about to hit the road. let me explain. Let us assume that car is "c" lights are "l" and the lighting is "r". So their positions will be some thing like this\n     c   lr\nAs lights will be before car.\nNow lights have released the light and the light is hits the ground and at teh same time car reaches that point.\n           cr   lr1\nr1 is the light that is released at that point of instant.\nI had explained a lot and in that effort I had missed the point that this cannot be explained like this. LOL.
72735
No it is not possible to travel faster than light because the equipment you try to use will not work. The fastest thing to probably work may be a fast car. But there is still no way to travel fater than the speed of light. Speed of light travels at about 7 miles per second. I hope this helps.
799784
In theory, yes.  Because the light particles that were traveling slower than you would have been slower.  Very good question.  However, speeding past the speed of light would mean the fundamentals of E = Mc^2, would cease to make sense.
688056
This question comes up very regularly. If you do a search you will find it has been answered dozens of times in the past few months.\n\nThe speed of light is an absolute constant. It doesn't matter what speed you are travelling at the light will always be travelling away from you at the same speed: the speed of light.\n\nThe freaky part is that the light from your headlights would seem to be travelling away form you at the speed of light (C), but to an observer who was sitting still the light would also appears to be travelling away from them at the speed of light. How can that happen? Well it's one of the tricky bits of relativity, but part of the solution lies in understanding that although light never slows down or speeds up relative to any observer it does change frequency.\n\nSo to you the light from your headlights will look quite normal, but to someone sitting still your headlights will appear to be emitting x-rays. The light would be invisible to them.\n\nThe corrolary of that is that any light approaching your windshield will be equally shifted into the x-ray part of the spectrum. Although the headlights will be emitting visible light, any time they strike an object and reflect back they will reflect back extremely low frequency light that is invisible to the human eye.\n\n\nSo no, it won't do a damn bit o good to turn on your headlights. That's not because the light won't travel, it will travel just fine. The problem will be that any light that reflects back off the road will be invisible to the human eye.
1116675
Ha\n\nInteresting speculation \n\n1. The light will not change color no matter how fast you go. Only in your perception it will, so unless the law enforcement is traveling within your frame of reference you would be found guilty anyway.\n2. True, if you are moving towards the light its frequency will increase towards the blue and will appear green to you, but the acceleration would kill you.  \n3. If you could travel with speed of light why would you care about traffic lights?\n\nGood question anyway.
902581
The moment you hit the speed of light, time would stop for you, so it would be pretty hard (impossible) to turn the darn lights on!\n\nSaid another way, as you approach the speed of light, the outside observer sees you slowing down; when you hit the speed of light, it would take the observer an infinite amount of time to see any change in your state.\n\nNow, suppose you left your headlights on the whole way, what would everyone see?\n\nAs you approached the speed of light, the light is still reflecting off the objects around you, so the observer, and you, continue to see the reflected light. Once you hit light speed, however, the energy transfer required to turn heat into light wouldn't occur, so no one would see the photons. Of course, since you're traveling at the speed of light at that point, everyone would see you hit the object.\n\nOr this way... the light leaving your headlight changes it's frequency in proportion to the speed you're moving, once you hit light speed, the light would become matter! Of course, the wave packet that is light + your car wouldn't are too much, since time wouldn't exist for you anymore.\n\nHave a nice trip!
1048247
There may be objects (tachyons) that move faster than light, up to perhaps infinite speeds.\nHowever, nothing already slower than light can accelerate to or beyond the speed of light.
1042298
No it can't.\n\nLaser light goes at exactly the speed of light.
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!
724874
Answer is yes.  By "seeing", what we really mean is our eyes receiving light either reflected or emitted from an object.  It doesn't matter how fast the object is moving, or if it's approaching or receeding - the speed of light is constant, therefore you will see it both coming and going.  That's one of the beautys of relativity - the speed of light is not relative to the object it's coming from, but instead is fixed and will measure the same speed for all observers in the universe, moving or not.
70554
First of your car can't go faster than the speed of light.  If your car were going faster than the speed of light, the laws of physics would not apply (since the car is breaking them), so there is no way to accurately predict what would happen.\n\nThat said, if you were going really close to the speed of light relative to some observer (keep in mind that velocity is relative, so it could just as easily be you standing still and the observer moving at near the speed of light), you would see the headlights behave perfectly normally, but he would see you almost catching up to them.  So if we imagine that you could go faster than the speed of light it would follow that everything would seem normal to you, but the observer would see you pass the front of the beam of light emitted by the headlights (actually he would see you in front of the light because he can only see the light when it reaches his eyes, and basically you would get there first, but it's the same idea).\n\n***Response to Cecil***\nAnyone with the audacity to assert that they *know* what would happen based on the laws of physics is mistaken.  Because the car CANNOT travel faster than the speed of light, and therefore the laws of physics DO NOT APPLY!  Any attempts to address this question are purely speculative, and an explaination based on science is no more likely to be correct than one based on Gene Roddenberry's imagination.  Anyone who attempts to apply Einstein's theory of relatively or any other scientific law or theory to this senario and present it as the absolute truth clearly has no understanding of the theories they are attempting to apply, and is, so to speak, the one "without a clue."\n\n***Response to Boomer***\nApparently I need to defend my answers yet again.  Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.  There are no exceptions, and that's not a "belief," it's a fact.  Thus the car defies the laws of physics, and consequently its interactions with the physical world are unpredictable.  Meaning we cannot predict them, and thus cannot know what would happen.  And anyone who thinks that light and urine behave in the same manner is in no position to be calling others "ignorant morons."\n\n***Response to Cecil's Response***\nFirstly, if you're going to assert that your answer is correct based on the extend of your education, I strongly recommend the use of proper grammar.  As for the car and the light, if you had actually read my answer you may have noticed it is based on the assumption that the speed of light is constant.  For the person in the car, everything is perfectly normal.  He would see the light moving in front of him at 3 x 10^8 m/s and the observer (relative to whom we are measuring the speed of the car) would appear to be moving away from him faster than 3 x 10^8 m/s second, lets say 4 x 10^8 m/s.  The observer would also see the light moving 3 x 10^8 m/s, but he would see the car moving in the same direction at 4 x 10^8 m/s, so to the observer it would appear that the car reaches any given point before any of the light it had previously emmitted.  Also, I'm not sure what the doppler effect has to do with any of this, but it occurs because the wavelength of the sound waves decreases because the object creating the wave moves either closer to or farther away from the previous peak before creating the next one, not because the speed of the sound waves change.  This occurs with light as well, and can been observed as red shift and blue shift.  When this occurs, the speed of the light does not change but the wavelenght of the light is altered by the motion of its source.\n\n***Comment on Tjtindal's Response to Cecil***\nStar Trek is science fiction, but the entire concept of faster-than-light travel is pure fiction.  Nothing can move faster than the speed of light because mass increases with velocity and becomes infinite at 3 x 10^8 m/s.  Because F=ma the force need to i
158568
All these answers are wrong. Light moves from each source at a speed we'll call one. If you are traveling at the speed of light, then anything that leaves you at the speed og light will be traveling the same. Now while you will not see far with your headlights, they may well provide sufficeient view, as they are ahead, to give you sight enough to drive. But you shouldn't think about changing direction. Those sorts of speed are highly unstable and could rip your car apart