If you're in a car...

[Dr_-X-]

... traveling at the speed of light, and you turn the headlights on, what happens?

 

[Levitas1234]

I would just chill out man, just lay back and watch the show.

 

[AvsJoe]

You don't see what they illuminate. That was an easy one.

The light never exits the bulbs. Theory of relativity, my man.

 

[Citrus]

You crash into a tree.

 

[Xpwn3ntial]

Try to figure out how much of what drug I just took.

 

[sneakypenguin]

The light from the headlights would still be going the speed of light from your speed of reference.

Snip from article

In 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.

If 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 look the same as usual. Looking out of the window is a different matter. The light from your headlights will always go at the speed of light in your reference frame. It will strike any object in its path and be reflected back. Everything else will be coming towards you at nearly the speed of light, so the light reflected from it will be Doppler shifted to very high frequencies--towards the ultraviolet or beyond. If you have a suitable camera you could take a snapshot. The objects passing are contracted in length but because of the different times of passage for the light and effects of aberration, the snapshot will show the objects you pass as rotated.

 

[Dr_-X-]

Wait... So would nothing happen or would the light travel at twice the speed of light (like leave the car at the speed of light, thus going twice that fast)?

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

You can't see a damn thing and you end up crashing into a giant building resulting in a fiery death

 

[Grensen]

Stop the car and video it in action then ebay it for millions then spend the money on a doomsday weapon... or something

 

[quiet_samurai]

You would see the light from your prospective, but everything outside the car would be in a different spectrum.

Now imagine you are sitting in the back seat and then get up and move to the front seat. Are you then traveling faster then the speed of light??

 

[Dr_-X-]

Heh. Sorry if that was a dumb question.

 

[mikecoulter]

The light would just go twice the normal speed of light. Simple.

 

[himemiya1650]

Realistically, you're on a really bad trip. To state something new, you might very well cause a black hole to open. Either way you wouldn't see the light

 

[The Austin]

You hit a squirrel.

 

[The Heik]

... traveling at the speed of light, and you turn the headlights on, what happens?

You don't see anything, and the cops give you a ticket that'd bankrupt the world.

 

[mexicola]

You don't see what they illuminate. That was an easy one.

This. Come on, its basic physics. If you travel faster than light, you won't see anything.

Well I'll be the first one to admit my physic knowledge is less then perfect but I thought the gist of it was that speed light is constant no matter the reference system, or to put it differently light would still be coming out of your headlights

 

[Ironic Pirate]

I would jump out, if the doors not locked, and be damned about the lights. If it was locked, I wouldn't see anything as the light would never leave the car. It's why you don't put guns on the SR 71 blackbird, it would run into the bullets. Also, this would be in space, right, so you wouldn't see anything anyways. Unless you were on a conveyor belt going the speed of light in the opposite direction...

 

[AngloDoom]

You crash.

You were just travelling way above the speed-limit with no headlights on. I'm pretty sure you're dead.

 

[EnzoHonda]

You can't travel at the speed of light. It breaks the laws of physics, you might as well ask "If I divide by zero..."

Now, say you're going really really fast (like 3/4 the speed of light), the light from your headlights will travel away from you at the speed of light. Think of it this way. What happens to sound on a Super-sonic jet? You can still hear people in the back talking, but the jet is going faster than the speed of sound. Sound from the people on a jet is relative to those people just like speed of light on the really fast car is relative to the really fast car.