Light speed paradox

 If you throw a ball to me at 20 m.p.h. and I run away from you at 10 m.p.h. then the ball approaches me at 10 m.p.h.  If I run towards you at 10 m.p.h. then the ball approaches me at 30 m.p.h.  Not so with light.

 If you have a flashlight and turn it on at me and I run away the light will approach me at 186.000 m.p.s. regardless of how fast I run from you.  If I run towards you at any speed the light will still approach me at the same 186.000 m.p.s.  The speed of light is absolute.  

 It takes light 11 minutes to reach Mars from Earth.  It takes 22 minutes round trip. But you can not catch up to a light wave and watch it move at 186.000 m.p.s.

 Question; Is light above space and time?

 Love.....We interpret love by the way our parents raised us. We then parent ourselves the way our parents parented us.  That may be punitive love for some, induldged love for others, over corrosive love for still others and a host of others in family's throughout America.

 We are then thrusted upon the world and expected to deal with all these other forms of love and we end up with social problems all our lives.  You hear things like "Love failed me"  "Love is a four letter word"  "Whats Love got to do with it"   Heart broken and sad and so many divorces. Then the children prepare for their divorce in the hope they won't be hurt as bad. 

 Its all about Agape Love if you can find it.

Hmm....

Say we had a really powerful telescope,and we could focus clearly and in minute detail on Alpha Centauri, up to the point where we can clearly identify and individual alien waving at us. (Hi Floop!)

Now Floop launches a rocket at us, at the speed of light, it's gonna get here in 4 years or so. Do we see it before it gets here?

  At both ends of the spectrum out side the visable range we would see nothing.  Nothing made of mass can travail the speed of light.  But what ever we saw (your ship) we'd have to factor in time dilation and we'd see it upon arrival at 186.000 m.p.s. regardless of our motion.

But we're watching the launch..... we see the rocket before it takes off. What do we see between launch and arrival?

rooperi.  If you want to see all the light simultaneously you would have to go into the 5th dimension.  To see all the light trails moving towards Earth, your eye's would need to be super-positoned and you would need to be able to interprit many thoughts simultaneously. You would be able to see all the history and future of those light waves.

 If you want to resolve a paradox you need to add at least one dimension or more.  Moving up we would be able to see to the right and left of time and forward and backward in time. 

 We only think in a linear mode forward in time, thus we have all these paradox's.  Your telescope would need a lens that is super-positoned and you would need the extea-physical ability to interprit what you see.

 If you are only indulged in the paradox in and of itself. Then any answer will work.  In a paradox there is no right or wrong answer, it is a test of character. But you must supply an answer.  Ask any businessman facing converging markets or the volatility on Wall street.  We must become an artist at making those decisions.

 If one gets upset, emotional or just sits on their hands they will face a catastrophe. Nothing personal in my remarks.

If you're in a car traveling at the speed of light, and you turn the lights on, do they do anything?

 N2UHC Hello.  One has to be able to realise it would take all the energy in the Universe to get a car to go the speed of light.  Once it does that it coverts to energy and then can not go slower than light.  It becomes the very thing your trying to perform in your mind experiment.  Which is energy.

 Even for you to reach for the light switch your hand would have to move faster than light. The only thing that can go faster than light is a particle that first loses its energy creating an optic boom, then accelerating at super-liminal speeds.

 Light will not out acclerate energy.  A tachyon will but it has no energy.  It would have to have energy imparted to it to slow to light speed. Then it can not go slower than light.  It would have to have mass imparted to it to fall below light speed, then it can not go faster than light.

 Now. the time factor has to be concidered.  Standing still you have maximum time on you.  Zero speed max time.  We age at the speed of light.  The faster you move the less time is on you.  There is a conservation of time and speed. Once you reach maximum speed (speed of light) then you have zero time on you. 

 Zero speed maximum time, Maximum speed zero time.  At the speed of light the clock does not tick. 

 Then you have the problem of increasing energy.  When a proton is accelerated to NEAR light speed (at C.E.R.N.) the proton increase's its mass 470 times. So it requires even more energy to push it.  When they do the lights dim in the surrounding city. 

 The energy of motion, motion in and of itself, litterally converts into mass.  E=mc square.

floop laughing himself silly thinking "that rooperi, 4 years to impact and he just stands there waving". 

edit - wait, i suppose he would have been standing there 4 years ago, so he probably wasn't waving back, but i suppose that by the time you see the launch the missle would be here because it is traveling at the same speed as the light bringing you the image.  whatever, my answer was funnier. 

 I suppose a funny answer is as good as any.  After all we know just enough about the Universe to get us into a whole lot of trouble.  Maybe we came from Venus, after turning it into a ball of fire it my soon be time for us to go to Mars.

Steinar Hi.  Yes time is relative.  But any real time fix in the Universe is where relativity is equivalent. And that depends on the absolute speed of light.

One can not be completely still that would violate the 3erd law of thermodynamics.

What does the OP; mean I see so much?

When you say that the speed of light is "absolute," isn't it because we're not capable of moving anywhere near the speed of light? In your example of the ball moving at 20 mph, you move away at 10 mph and the relative speed is 10 mph.  Let's say you turn on a flashlight and the light from the device moves at 186,000 mps. If you're in a 747 moving away from the flashlight at 450 mph, the speed of light can be said to be absolute because the speed of the 747 is insignificant by comparison to the speed of light. If that 747 could move at 93,000 mps away from the flashlight, the relative speed would be 93,000 mps. Therefore the speed of light is not absolute, the human race is not capable of moving at a speed that is comparable to the speed of light.

The lights make light, but the light stays in.So basically nothing happens.

Analogy:

Say you're driving you car, and some guy hits a tennis ball so that it goes with the same speed as the car, right when you by him by. The car and ball would be moving relative to the environment, but they would be completely still relative to each other.

I dont think so. Your not moving relative to your car, you will see the beam a normal. But somebody outside will see something completely different.

electricpawn..Absolute in every frame of reference.  If you are on a 747 and point a flashlight out the window the light moves away at 186.000 m.p.s.  If a person on the ground see's the same light wave, it moves from his point of reference at the same 186.000 m.p.s.

 You can not add in or subtract the speed of the 747.

How can you be be 50-75 years behind in a field that was less than 50 years old at the time?

El Senior. The thing that knocked me down about it is, that heavy spacecraft flooting in space is accelerated just a little by one electron emanating from the tail pipe.   

What you're saying is only true for the 450 mph 747. If I'm moving west at 186,000 mps and someone east of me turns on a light, I won't see it. If a star is 50,000,000 light years away, it takes 50,000,000 years for us to see it. By your reasoning, we'd see all light in the universe simultaneously regardless of the distance of the sources.

electricpawn. It makes no difference if we use one flashlight or many flashlights (or many stars) at every point in the Universe the light is the same speed regardless of any planet anywhere in the Universe relative motion, red shifted, blue shifted, infrared, micro wave, gamma ray, xray all the same speed.

 Note; The speed of light 186.285.3959 m.p.s. is in a vaccum. When spacetime is compressed like water in liquid form, light thinks its moving through the same spacetime as a vacuum but it moves a tad slower in a liquid.

 They even have a special gell that when they put light into it you can see the light slowly move through it in one minute.  But that is because the light thinks its a light minute through there. Because spacetime is very dense in the gell.

 Its not that light moves at one speed like an electric motor 1650 r.p.m. It moves in all frames of reference at one super dimensional speed.  

So you used the example of throwing a ball at 20 mph to someone moving away from the thrower at 10 mph. This made the relative speed of the ball 10 mph. The actual speed of the ball is 20 mph regardless of it's speed in relation to a separate object. Yes, everyone knows what the speed of light is. Are you saying that because light is a constant speed that the relative speed effect does not apply to it? If a particle is moving away from the sun at 93,000 mps, does this not put light generated by the sun at a relative speed of 93,000 mps compared to that particle? The actual speed is still 186,000 mps just as the actual speed of the ball is 20 mph.