Assuming you can travel the speed of light, would you actually be able to see anything...?
966236
No matter how fast you go or think you are going, light always appears to be going the speed of light.\n\nEven if you are going 0.99999999999 c from the viewpoint of an outside observer, you would still see light traveling at the speed of light around you. Now, light sent by objects moving at 0.9999999999 c towards you (those "ahead" of you) would be severely blue-shifted and light from objects moving away from you at that speed (those "behind" you) would be severely red-shifted.\n\nBut light from any object moving the same speed as you would look perfectly normal. In fact if you covered the windows of your spaceship (it better be a spaceship, since you won't be in any atmosphere for very long), you wouldn't know you were moving at all!
763848
you couldn't drive at the speed of light.  But if you could drive near the speed of light, and turned on your headlights, light would leave your car at the speed of light relative to the car.  Einstein asked this very same question (except I think he used a train).  ANYWAY......this seems paradoxical and impossible.  But it's not....because TIME and SPACE (and distance and mass and all other measly "constants") change in order to make this possible that the speed of light still remain a constant.\nP.S. - Don't expect to understand all of this at once.  I'm pretty bright and it took me quite awhile to catch on to just how it works.
10713
no, only things traveling at speeds close to the speed of light experience the distortion of time.  Light itself doesn't have mass or anything, it's an electromagnetic wave.  And even if it did, time is only distorted for the thing thats moving at the high velocities, so you wouldn't ever know it.
41924
It is definitely possible. However, we do not have the technology needed to reach the kind of speeds necessary to allow for travel to other solar systems, stars, etc. Here's something to consider, though. Einsteins Laws of Relativity, while not allowing travel at full light speed, do allow travel almost up to (and just short of) light speed. As you go closer to light speed, the traveler's clock would "slow down" as compared to an observer's clock on a "stationary" object. If you got close enough to light speed, you could travel across the galaxy (100,000 light years wide) in what might seem minutes or hours to you, and about 100,000 years to me. Great, great stuff. To learn more about this concept, google "twins paradox". Or go to http://media.nasaexplores.com/lessons/02-060/9-12_2.pdf and scroll down to page three. This will explain it more fully to you.
410964
i think its very much possible to travel at the speed of light, its just that we would need an extremely strong processor (like a fax machine) to break down the matter that we are made of into energy (E=MC^2) and then after reaching the destination just convert the energy back into matter. (not possible with the technology we have today)
1042298
No it can't.\n\nLaser light goes at exactly the speed of light.
555954
Updated 1997 by PEG.\nOriginal by Philip Gibbs 1997.\n\n\nI am driving my car at the speed of light and I turn on my headlights.  What do I see?\n\nSadly this question and all others about experiences at the speed of light do not have a definitive answer.  You cannot go at the speed of light so the question is hypothetical.  Hypothetical questions do not have definitive answers.  Only massless particles such as photons can go at the speed of light.  As a massive object approaches the speed of light the amount of energy needed to accelerate it further increases so that an infinite amount would be needed to reach the speed of light.\n\nSometimes people persist: What would the world look like in the reference frame of a photon?  What does a photon experience?  Does space contract to two dimensions at the speed of light?  Does time stop for a photon?. . .  It is really not possible to make sense of such questions and any attempt to do so is bound to lead to paradoxes.  There are no inertial reference frames in which the photon is at rest so it is hopeless to try to imagine what it would be like in one.  Photons do not have experiences.  There is no sense in saying that time stops when you go at the speed of light.  This is not a failing of the theory of relativity.  There are no inconsistencies revealed by these questions.  They just don't make sense.\n\nDespite these empty answers, nobody should feel too put down for asking such questions.  They are exactly the kind of question that Einstein often asked himself from the age of 16 until he discovered special relativity ten years later.  Einstein reported that in 1896 he thought,\n\n``If I pursue a beam of light with the velocity c (velocity of light in a vacuum), I should observe such a beam of light as a spatially oscillatory electromagnetic field at rest.  However, there seems to be no such thing, whether on the basis of experience or according to Maxwell's equations.  From the very beginning it appeared to me intuitively clear that, judged from the standpoint of such an observer, everything would have to happen according to the same laws as for an observer who, relative to the earth, was at rest.  For how, otherwise, should the first observer know, i.e., be able to determine, that he is in a state of fast uniform motion?  One sees that in this paradox the germ of the special relativity theory is already contained.  Today everyone knows, of course, that all attempts to clarify this paradox satisfactorily were condemned to failure as long as the axiom of the absolute character of time, viz., of a simultaneous, unrecognizedly was anchored in the unconscious.  Clearly to recognize this axiom and its arbitrary character really implies already the solution to the problem.''\n\nIn 1905 he realised how it could be that light always goes at the same speed no matter how fast you go.  Events that are simultaneous in one reference frame will happen at different times in another that has a velocity relative to the first.  Space and time cannot be taken as absolute.  On this basis Einstein constructed the theory of special relativity, which has since been well confirmed by experiment.\n\nQuestions of relative velocity in relativity can be answered using the velocity subtraction formula v = (w - u)/(1 - wu/c2) (see relativity FAQ: velocity addition).  If you are driving at a speed u relative to me and you measure the speed of light in the same direction (w = c in my frame), the formula gives v the speed of light in your reference frame as, v = (c-u)/(1 - u/c).  For any speed u less than c this gives v = c so the speed of light is the same for you.  But if u = c the formula degenerates to zero divided by zero; a meaningless answer.\n\nIf you want to know what happens when you are driving at very nearly the speed of light, an answer can be given.  Within your car you observe no unusual effects.  You can look at yourself in your mirror which is moving with the car and you will lo
214684
No massive object can move at the speed of light, so the question is ill-posed. Sorry.\n\nAs a physicist, please let me give you a little advice: don't loose your time with this nonsense, try instead to focus on the mathematics of the relativity theory, that's the way to understand it. The rest is pseudo-science.
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.
64217
to answer your question it is possible to go faster the the speed of light. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second.\n\nIf zooming beyond the local speed limit is punishable by law, then some scientists may have a gargantuan speeding ticket to pay. \n\nIn a controversial experiment reported in this weeks journal Nature, scientists at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, New Jersey claim to have broken the ultimate speed limit -- the speed of light. Though hotly contested, some say this achievement could dramatically increase the speeds at which we can send and receive information. \n\nTaught in physics classes the world over, Albert Einsteins theory of special relativity holds that no object or information can move faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, or 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second. But NECs Lijun Wang says he created an experiment in which a light beam raced through a gas-filled chamber so quickly, it exceeded the speed of light by a factor of 300. Whats more, the light pulse appears to have left the confines of the chamber before it even entered a seemingly impossible occurrence according to theories of causality, which predict that causes must always precede their effects. \n\n"It sounds crazy, but this can actually occur," said Raymond Chiao, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley. Chiao, one of a group of researchers who have been working to break the speed-of-light limit, explained that although a common object such as a baseball could never be flung faster than the speed of light, pulses of energy with certain complex properties have been known to bend the rules. \n\n\n\n"It sounds crazy, but it actually can occur." \n\n\n\n\nIn fact, several recent experiments, including one done by Chiao earlier this year, have pointed to energy pulses zooming faster than light speed. Yet each of these experiments has been encumbered by severe limitations on measurement or observation of the energy pulses. In contrast, this latest experiment is being touted by some as the most dramatic example yet of light breaking its own speed barrier. \n\n"The effects are much larger and more spectacular" than previous observations, said Chiao. \n\nIn Wangs experiment, a pulse of light passed through a small chamber filled with atoms of elemental cesium. A light beam traveling through such a medium has two different velocities a velocity for the individual light waves in the beam and a group velocity for the entire beam. Oddly, some light waves in the beam can actually travel backward for miniscule amounts of time, creating a sort of "tail" behind forward-moving waves. As such, a light wave and its tail can leave the gas cavity at different times, creating the effect that the light beam has left the cavity before its even entered. \n\nConfused? Youre not alone. In fact, even scientists who are familiar with this area of study are unsure about the details of Wangs experiment. And many scientists said the experiments results are still open to interpretation. \n\nWilliam Happer, a physicist at Princeton University argued that several specific problems exist with the experiment, including the fact that pulses get distorted when passed through any media other than a vacuum, or empty space. In addition, he said Wang and his colleagues performed the experiment in a way that doesnt tell the whole story, and that it can be interpreted incorrectly. "This is anything but dramatic," said Happer. "If you look at the data, theres essentially no evidence that [the beam] is going faster than the speed of light." \n\nWhats more, most scientists agree that even if such a beam can be proved speedier than light, it would probably not be able to carry any information. Such a feat could conceivably allow data to be sent back in time, thus violating laws of causality and sending quantum physics into disrepair. \n\nOthers are more optimistic as to the possible
476125
Huge.\n\nThere is an edge to what we are able to see and could ever possibly see in the universe. Light travels at 300,000 kilometers per second. That's top speed in this universe—nothing can go faster—but it's relatively slow compared to the distances to be traveled. The nearest big galaxy to our Milky Way, the Andromeda galaxy, is two million light-years away. The most distant galaxies we can now see are 10 or 12 billion light-years away. We could never see a galaxy that is farther away in light travel time than the universe is old—an estimated 14 billion or so years. Thus, we are surrounded by a "horizon" that we cannot look beyond—a horizon set by the distance that light can travel over the age of the universe. \n\nThis horizon describes the visible universe—a region some 28 billion light years in diameter. But what are the horizons of a civilization that inhabits the most distant galaxies we see? And what about galaxies at the limits of their vision? There is every reason to think that the universe extends a long way beyond the part of the universe we can see. In fact, a variety of observations suggest that our visible patch may be a small fraction—maybe an infinitely small fraction—of the whole universe. \n\nThis view of the universe fits with the currently popular idea that the universe began with a vast expansion of size. The idea describes a kind of undirected energy present in the vacuum of space, called scalar fields, that somehow got channeled into a process called "inflation." By conservative estimates, the universe expanded so much during this period that something the size of an atom inflated to the size of a galaxy. \n\nIf this grand idea is correct, then the universe is larger than we ever could have imagined.\n\netc...
1121662
nope. You would not see anything remotely close to light. It would be completely void of any reflection and the particles that make up it's mass would disintegrate along with you. You only see what you see because of the matter's string particles reflection of light. (You'd be dead to everyone)
855043
It's all theory, we don't know if (something) can exceed the speed of light. I would argue that time would be void at that moment, but again it's my theory. Interesting thought though.
992432
Your question is similar to Einstein's question that led to a revolution in physics, so it's not a stupid question by far. Einstein asked, what would happen if someone could travel along a beam of light? What would the traveler see? \n\nThink of relative motion. When I'm on a train, watching the country side go by, it appears to me that everything else is moving and I, the tables, the chairs, and the people on the train are not moving. If I were standing on the ground watching the train go by, it would be the oppisote: I would appear, to myself, to be standing still, and the train, people on it, chairs and tables would all appear to be moving. Relative motion, hense the term "relativity."\n\nWhat Einstein discovered is that even if one could travel at the speed of light, that person would observe the light in your headlight traveling away from him AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT. Weird, huh? Think about it. If you're on a ski slope and an avalance is chasing you, what are you going to do? You are going to RUN. Why? It decreases the rate at which the avalance is approaching you. If the avalance is traveling 20  mph and you can run 15 mph, the avalance is only gaining on you at a rate of 20 mph - 15 mph = 5 mph. You slow it's approach to you. However, that does not work with light. If you ran away from a light beam, and managed to travel at the speed of light, the light beam behind you would STILL BE APPROACHING YOU AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT. Light speed is constant in every reference frame, no matter WHAT the speed of the observer. \n\nIn short, you would see the light in the headlight traveling away from you at the speed of light.
1085739
OK!! Ignore the people who are saying that nothing physical can travel at the speed of light.  Light is physical and does actually travel at the speed of light!!  \n\nOnto your hypothetical train.  If the train is travelling at the speed of light and you try to run from one end to the other, logic dictates that you'd be travelling faster than light, but this time logic fails us.\n\nIt is impossible, according to einstein to travel faster than light.  But, according to einstein, it is possible to run from one end of the train to the other!!  This is done because they would be in the same place!  This is due to a part of the Theory of relativity call Lorentz contraction! \n\nAccording to you, the train would be the same length as it would be if stationary, and you would feel like you were running as if it were stationary.  But relative to the observer that is 'stationary' (actualy no such thing according to einstein) you would be at both ends of the train at the same time because you and the train would be zero.  The formula for lorentz contraction is L=L(0) x (square root of(1-(v/c)^2)).  Where L is the length of the train according to an observer, L(0) is the length of the stationary train, v is the speed of the train, c is the speed of light.\n\nIf you make v=c then you'll see that the train and you have absolutely no length.
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.
265157
It takes an infinite amount of energy to reach the speed of light, so the quick answer is "You can't".\n\nIf you are traveling at CLOSE TO the speed of light and you turn on your lights they will appear (to you) to create cones of light that travel at light speed relative to you.  If you measure the speed of the light, you will get c (approx 300,000 k/sec).  To you, the light will appear to be traveling 300,000 k/sec faster than you are.\n\nAn observer who is not moving (one who see's you as traveing at nearly light speed) will also see the light as traveling at speed c, but he will see it as moving only a little faster than you are.\n\nHow can this be?  It happens because of something called "time dialation/compression" (see the Theory of Special Relativity).  The "seconds" measured by you (in the car) are MUCH longer than the seconds measured by the motionless observer.  That's the magic of special relativity.\n\nThis is confusing stuff.  If you want to really understand it, look up special relativity and read carefully.