Message boards : LHC@home Science : Magnifying light speed Questions
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Ernesto Solis

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Message 14222 - Posted: 2 Jul 2006, 6:55:43 UTC

If your traveling at the speed of light with a
mirror in front of you, you will not see your reflection.

What will you see if you have a magnifying glass in
front of you?

Where would a video camera have to be placed to record such an event?

The further you hold it away, what changes might
occur?

Just thought I'd ask!
Ernie S
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Simplex0

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Message 14223 - Posted: 2 Jul 2006, 8:21:40 UTC - in response to Message 14222.  

If your traveling at the speed of light with a
mirror in front of you, you will not see your reflection.

Is that true regardless the speed and direction of the light source that illuminates you?

Tomas
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Message 14225 - Posted: 2 Jul 2006, 19:12:23 UTC - in response to Message 14223.  


Is that true regardless the speed and direction of the light source that illuminates you?
Tomas

If you travel with the speed of light there is (from your point of view) nothing in front of you. THERE IS ALSO NO TIME going on for you. The light from the front would be extremely ultraviolet-shifted and from back no light would reach you. the whole scenario is hypothetic and Einstein stumbled about the paradoxon when he imagined sitting on a light ray.
Take a pencil, paper and some time and use the equations of ordinary relativistic dynamics.
hope this helps
Jochen from Old Germany
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Message 14227 - Posted: 3 Jul 2006, 2:07:22 UTC

There is no travelling AT the speed of light.

What would be interesting would be if you were travelling at 95% the speed of light, but the optics of the magnifying glass were to slow light down to .9 the speed of light (when stationary).

The fact the magnifying glass is moving would be interesting.



I'm not the LHC Alex. Just a number cruncher like everyone else here.
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Message 14229 - Posted: 3 Jul 2006, 3:23:06 UTC - in response to Message 14227.  

There is no travelling AT the speed of light.

What would be interesting would be if you were travelling at 95% the speed of light, but the optics of the magnifying glass were to slow light down to .9 the speed of light (when stationary).

The fact the magnifying glass is moving would be interesting.




Suppose you stand with your back against a quasar moving at 95% of the speed of light and look trough the glass?

Tomas
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Ernesto Solis

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Message 14241 - Posted: 5 Jul 2006, 19:02:52 UTC

This was from Debugas at Einstein@home

at the speed of light your time stops.
If you moving very close to the speed of light then things in front of you that you approach will be changing very fast (live and age in an eye blink) and the things you leave behind you will look almost freezed (passing very slowly)

mirror in front of you (that travels together with you) will give you reflection up until the very speed of light. At the speed of light the mirror will be at zero distance from you and give you immediate reflection of your current state (or you can treat it as giving no reflection) When space becomes flat there is no space to speak about moving back and forth and reflecting anything (i mean in the direction of your movement)?

The more interesting question here is this: if you put a clock in front of your mirror and try to compare the clock in your hand and the clock-reflection that comes back. will both show the same time ? What the difference will be ? will it be changing (decreasing increasing) if you move faster ?



What will you see if you have a magnifying glass in
front of you?

i don't see how it would be different in any way from what you see when you do not move. Have in mind that when you move at speed close to speed of light the things in front of you that you are approaching get magnified by themselves (well not exactly magnified but they approach you and it looks like they stretch out from the destination point of your movement) - well in normal situation when you look at road in front of you it looks narrowing the farther you look , at the speed of light however it will not look narrowing - it will look equally wide at any distance ahead. So for magnifying glass there is nothing to magnify because all distances ahead of you become zero - collapse to the plane perpendicular to the direction of your movement.

At this point i would like to mention wave-function collapse paradox.
If you look at two entangled photons moving in opposite directions and then detect one's polarization immidiately knowing that the other's one polarization must be perpendicular. This looks for you as faster than light collapse of wave function. But for those photons the space is flat and they are still at zero distance from each other. Could this provide a solution to the paradox ? Look at paradox from photons point of view ;)



Where would a video camera have to be placed to record such an event?

sorry i don't get your question. You mean how an outside observer would monitor your motion ? the observer that is standing still ahead of you will not see you until the very moment you reach him (interestingly if Jesus Christ arrives in the light-speed spaceship to earth we will have no warning before his arrival - he would indeed come as promissed in the bible - unexpectedly without prior warning ). Incoming at light speed objects cannot be seen in advance so we can get unexpected incoming at any moment (and actually some scientists were warning us about incoming very fast objects from the milky way central parts).
The observer staying behind you will see you freezed (when you move at close to speed of light the objects that you run away from they will look almost freezed and from those objects standpoint you will also seem to be changing very slowly)


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Ernesto Solis

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Message 14418 - Posted: 24 Jul 2006, 2:14:39 UTC - in response to Message 14227.  
Last modified: 24 Jul 2006, 2:17:32 UTC

There is no travelling AT the speed of light.

What would be interesting would be if you were travelling at 95% the speed of light, but the optics of the magnifying glass were to slow light down to .9 the speed of light (when stationary).

The fact the magnifying glass is moving would be interesting.




Alex,
What if we were travelling at 99.9% the speed of light and pushed the
magnifying glass away from us. Could we see beyond the barrier of light speed?

Ernie S
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P.S. Hows River~~ doing?
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Message 14467 - Posted: 30 Jul 2006, 21:17:45 UTC - in response to Message 14418.  


P.S. Hows River~~ doing?


preoccupied with family problems, I'm afraid

hope to be back in the Autumn

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Ernesto Solis

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Message 14469 - Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 6:30:43 UTC - in response to Message 14467.  


P.S. Hows River~~ doing?


preoccupied with family problems, I'm afraid

hope to be back in the Autumn



Good to hear from you!
We all miss you sir!!!

Ernie S
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Message 14642 - Posted: 14 Sep 2006, 17:29:30 UTC - in response to Message 14418.  

What if we were travelling at 99.9% the speed of light and pushed the
magnifying glass away from us. Could we see beyond the barrier of light speed?

This is the old one about shining a torch out of a vehicle moving at light speed isn't it?

Ernesto, I think that one gets filed along with "What happened before the start of Time?", "Is a cat a wave or a particle?" and "What would happen if the Pope wasn't a Roman Catholic?"
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Ernesto Solis

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Message 14644 - Posted: 15 Sep 2006, 5:47:22 UTC - in response to Message 14642.  

What if we were travelling at 99.9% the speed of light and pushed the
magnifying glass away from us. Could we see beyond the barrier of light speed?

This is the old one about shining a torch out of a vehicle moving at light speed isn't it?

Ernesto, I think that one gets filed along with "What happened before the start of Time?", "Is a cat a wave or a particle?" and "What would happen if the Pope wasn't a Roman Catholic?"



Any contribution from France is well appriciated.
Thank you
Ernie S
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Message 14645 - Posted: 15 Sep 2006, 8:24:19 UTC - in response to Message 14644.  

What if we were travelling at 99.9% the speed of light and pushed the
magnifying glass away from us. Could we see beyond the barrier of light speed?

This is the old one about shining a torch out of a vehicle moving at light speed isn't it?

Ernesto, I think that one gets filed along with "What happened before the start of Time?", "Is a cat a wave or a particle?" and "What would happen if the Pope wasn't a Roman Catholic?"



Any contribution from France is well appriciated.
Thank you
Ernie S


Well, the only other response was: dr mabuse (from Old Germany) has already answered that, and the answer is No.

The speed of light, according to relativity theory, is an absolute. Nothing goes faster than light (ye olde joke being that the only thing faster than light is dark because it always gets there first).

Incidentally, 0.1% lightspeed is still nearly 300m/s, which approaches the speed of shot from a carabine rifle. That's a pretty hard and fast push for someone for whom time is practically at a standstill.
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Message 14647 - Posted: 15 Sep 2006, 8:43:01 UTC


sQuonk said - "The speed of light, according to relativity theory, is an absolute. Nothing goes faster than light (ye olde joke being that the only thing faster than light is dark because it always gets there first)."

Surely the fastest thing known is a rumor about one of the bosses having an affair with his secretary being spread through the typing pool?





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Message 14649 - Posted: 16 Sep 2006, 15:27:59 UTC - in response to Message 14645.  
Last modified: 16 Sep 2006, 15:29:45 UTC

[quote "sQuonk"]Incidentally, 0.1% lightspeed is still nearly 300m/s, [/quote]
How long are you away from school? Classical problem of units conversion. 300 km/s is the right answer.

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Message 18536 - Posted: 3 Nov 2007, 8:18:41 UTC - in response to Message 14645.  

The speed of light, according to relativity theory, is an absolute. Nothing goes faster than light

But, from what I somewhat remember:
Given:

    1. A photon- the particle of light- moves at a speed represented by "c"
    1. "c" represents the speed of light, or approximately 186000 mph (or mi/h) relative to No-motion/0 mph
    2. "P" represents a person testing "c" under various conditions
    3. "Pv" represents "P-of-v" or 'velocity of "P"'
    4. While Pv=0 m/s or 0 mi/h, c=186000 mi/h (approx.)



Regardless of "Pv", "P" will always find the speed of a photon moving toward or away from him to be equivalent to "c".

(ye olde joke being that the only thing faster than light is dark because it always gets there first)

And Chaos always wins against order; it's more organized. (I saw this in a Terry Pratchett book.)
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