Scooby

What does Olivia Newton-John have to with price of fish?

hades

- According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, the light leaving the front of your car would still be travelling away from you at the speed of light.
- According to special realtivity, without infinite energy and infinite mass etc, you couldn't be travelling at the speed of light, although you could be doing 99.99999% the speed of light.
- "Deep space" is not a perfect vacuum. From memory, I believe there is approximately 1 atom per cubic centimeter. This is a pretty damn good vacuum, but not a perfect one. However, you'd have to have very good night vision to spot reflected light off this single atom
- Light travels at a different speed in different media. For example, it travels about 1.5 times slower in glass - this is the principle on which a lens works. In a plasma, light has both phase and group velocities. IIRC, the phase velocity is often well over C.
- If E=MC2 , and mass is tripled, energy is also tripled. I believe the energy in this context would only be released by disinitegrating all the particles - which may be an interesting experiment with the fat bloke down the road
- IMHO Newtonian mechanics are perfectly reasonable approximations as long as you don't go down to quantum effects, anywhere light speed etc. For a better approximation, add relativity effects, you get Einstein. Hawkings has added several other improvements, and still it is an approximation. The human race still does not know in what circumstances the approximation will be invalid.

I believe all of the above (apart from those labelled IMHO etc) are "accepted theory" in physics. Very little in physics is an absolute law.

(BSc Hons Physics & electronics - including getting 100% in the "relativity" mid term exam - which was a little lucky, I admit)

Midlife......

iTrader: (2)

simple.......you are in your own frame of reference so the light leaves the headlights as normal

It's every body else who can't cope

fast bloke

you sure about that? I'm fairly certain the fat bloke can't **** three times as often as me

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