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Speed of light relative to viewer.

Asked Mar 4, 2009, 04:18 AM — 12 Answers
Please refresh my memory. If I'm on a spaceship traveling at the speed of light - and shine a flashlight out the front window (forward), will I see the light going forward in front of my ship?

If so, then wouldn't someone watching from afar see the flashlight beam going faster than the speed of light?

I remember from school days that there's an "elementary" answer to this, but googling is no help with the odd terms

12 Answers
dudi5717's Avatar
dudi5717 Posts: 2, Reputation: 10
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#11

Sep 12, 2010, 02:17 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ;
will I see the light going forward in front of my ship?
Hello RickJ

Exact answer is YES. When you travelling with the space ship with the speed of light c, you can see back and front views. But some deformations occours on sight.
You can find the first order information about your question at this site.
Alice In Physics
Look at the following two papers there :
Space deformation and Doppler Effect.
That pages are interactive so you can see how it occours and what happens.
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dudi5717's Avatar
dudi5717 Posts: 2, Reputation: 10
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#12

Apr 3, 2011, 12:23 PM
Speed of light is relative

I wrote two new papers on this subject. First paper shows how the light behaves. The second paper is about the reason of this behaviour.

Alice Law, Relativity Theory Part 1

Alice Law, Relativity Theory Part 2
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Gnostradamus's Avatar
Gnostradamus Posts: 1, Reputation: 1
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#13

Aug 5, 2012, 12:04 AM
Quote:
But as velocities apporach the speed of light the rules change
That's technically incorrect. Velocities are never additive. But at slow speeds relative to light, such as those in normal day-to-day life, the difference is negligible and undetectable. As speeds approach that of light, the difference is no longer fractional. At the speed of light, it's not additive at all.

And it's possible to come up with such a scenario. Suppose a photon emits another photon. In a sense, from an observer's point of the view a photon's time would be constant (frozen), but the second photon would still travel at the speed of light, from the view of the first photon.
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