Is the flashlight beam traveling faster than the speed of light?

Traveling in a car at the speed of light, you shine a flashlight toward a car in front of you also travelling at the speed of light. Does the flashlight beam reach the car ahead? If so, what speed is the flashlight beam traveling?

well first, read my other answer to your question about the speed of sound.  You would probably expect the answer to be the same, and the light to reach the other car, but this is a special circumstance because nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, not even light itself.  when a beam of light is shone ahead of a rapidly moving space vehicle, and is expected to be moving at the speed of light plus the speed of the vehicle, it is still only moving at the speed of light, which is puzzling.  Physicists have defined the speed of light to be the ultimate cutoff point for speed.


And also, you wouldn't be able to travel at the speed of light anyway because time would probably stop since it does get slower and slower the faster you go.  Velocity warps time, the faster you go, the slower time moves for you relative to a stationary object.  I've read this, and it is definitely true, we had to derive the formula in physics from, and calculate the time, length(which decreases with speed), and mass (which increases with speed) distortion as well.  The effects of this are very negligible unless you are moving at speeds very very close to the speed of light, at least over 90% of the speed of light, and we haven't gotten anywhere close yet.  The denominator of this factor that time, length, and mass are distorted by actually is 1 minus the square root of the speed of light(c) over the speed in which the object is traveling (v), so the reason you can't go faster than the speed of light is because if v was greater than c, then that square root would be greater than one, meaning the denominator would be negative, meaning the factor would be negative, and the light would actually be travelling backwards in time...


If you find any of this interesting, I highly recommend "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene.

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