If a car could travel at the speed of light would its headlights be of any use to the driver?

Answer 1

Yes, assuming a vessel prepared for travel at the light the headlight would work.

No. Assuming a car could travel at the speed of light, and assume the headlights were isolated to feed the electricity to the bulbs, and assuming the bulb lit up, the light would not project forward through space lighting the way in front of the car, as the light from the headlights would be travelling at the same speed as the car, so it would just be black in front, assuming this is travelling through outer space.

Answer 2

1) So far, we have not been able to figure out a way to get objects with mass to travel at the speed of light. The energy required to do so would be infinitely large, and since there's no such thing as an infinite supply of energy, it's impossible.

2) That being said, if you were to travel at very close to the speed of light, you would see the light from your headlights as you would normally see light from your headlights. Light travels at the same speed regardless of your frame of reference (in other words, regardless of how fast you're moving compared to other objects). The road, trees, street signs, etc, on the other hand, would all be strangely warped.

Answer 3

yes the photons light is made of would be moving at the speed of the car plus the speed light travels on its own. this follows the same rule as to why anything dropped out of a moving object follows the path of the object it is dropped from. The above "yes the photons light is. . ." answer is wrong.
First of all, you need to realize that when you say you are traveling at the speed of light, that has to be with respect to, or relative to, something else. It is an underlying fundamental assumption of Einstein's special theory of relativity that uniform, non-accelerated motion has no meaning of and by itself. That is, there is, by assumption, no meaning to the idea of moving uniformly at the speed of light in an empty universe. That state is completely equivalent to being at rest in an empty universe..

I preface my answer with this comment because it leads immediately to the answer to the question. Imagine that you are in your car 'traveling at the speed of light' and that you turn on your headlights. That state of motion is utterly equivalent to being at rest in an empty universe. Since, when at rest, the light from your headlights would be launched forward from your car at the speed of light, relative to you, with a certain color spectrum, that is exactly what would happen if somehow you could be moving instead at the speed of light.

In other words, the presence or absence of other objects or matter in the universe relative to which, if present, you could make a determination that you were moving at the speed of light makes absolutely no difference to your own experiences and experiments. The light that you launch behaves in exactly the same way whether the other referential matter exists or not.

This leads into another interesting question, however. And that is whether the rest of the matter (mass) in the universe in some way affects your own local observations. So far this question has come up in relation to theories of gravity. If effect, the question is how does the universal gravitational constant, G, which determines how strongly gravitating masses attract each other, know what value to assume if there is no other mass in the universe. Mach proposed, essentially on philosophical grounds, that G must be determined by the sum total of all of the mass in the universe. Einstein assumed in his General Theory of Relativity that G is simply a universal constant, independent of the specific mass distribution of the universe. On the other hand, Brans and Dicke later proposed a so-called scalar-tensor theory of gravity in which the local value of G depends upon the rest of the mass in the universe through an additional scalar field that does not appear in Einstein's theory. (special thanks to Warren Davis, Ph.D., President, Davis Associates, Inc., Newton, MA USA for this answder)

Answer 4

Neither a car, nor any object with mass can be accelerated to the speed of light. In theory it would be possible to approach the speed of light, though never achieve it. In that case, ifa car wereto approach light speed, and you turned the lights on, you would observe nothing different in the relationship of the light beam to the car. The light would still appear to depart the headlights at the speed of light from your perspective.

Even though light speed travel is not possible, you can still think about the consequences and the conditions you would observe, and understanding them may give you some insight into the reasons objects with mass cannot move at light speed.If a moving object is accelerated until approaches light speed, its mass approaches infinity, which means inertia, the resistance to change in motion, also approaches infinity.Any further acceleration requires more and more energy, until the energyrequiredto achieveincreased velocityalso approaches infinity. Because time and space are interchangeable with changes in motion, the rate of your clock drops to near zero in relation to the clock you left at your starting point (an inertial frame of reference).Since your clock rate is near zero compared to that clock you left at your starting point, thetime intervalfrom point A to point B also approaches zero as younear light speed. By comparison, the photon, traveling at the speed of light, is not subject to elapsed time, so within its own frame of reference all distances are zero, therefore its speed is infinite (but onlywithin it's own frame. To an outside observer, light still has a finite but always constant velocity. It's all in the malleability of time and space).

Answer 5

According to Einstein, nothing but light should be able to travel at the speed of light. This is a theoretical; since we don't have a way to accelerate something to the speed of light except for light itself, we can't actually prove this. But for the purposes of this discussion, we'll say you can move at the speed of light.

My thinking on this is, the light would travel away from the headlights at 300,000 km/sec. But since the headlights are themselves going that fast, the light would really be going 600,000 km/sec.

The problem with that is, the laws of motion change as you approach the speed of light. If I throw a Baseball at 50 km/hr (hypothetically speaking, of course), and I throw it forward from the back of a moving truck, moving forward at 80 km/hr, it moves 130 km/hr, relative to someone who's not moving. But light doesn't work that way, for its speed is a constant (approximately) 300,000 km/sec, no matter which way you're going and at what speed. That is, if you're going 20 km/sec in a jet place and shine a beam of light in that direction, the light is not going 300,020 km/sec relative to stationary objects, but a constant 300,000 km/sec. How does that work? Don't ask this contributor, but Einstein could explain it better, it having something to do with an object's mass increasing as its speed increases, its mass being infinite at the speed of light. But is there more to this?

I think there's more to this, but at the speeds we're dealing with we're going to have to make a lot of inferences. Okay, check it out: Your jet plane going 20km/sec is traveling at 45,000mph--and NOTHING humans have ever created goes that fast. ICBMs don't go that fast. An SR-71 goes about 0.75km/sec at full throttle. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second; if you were to drive a 24 Hours of Daytona car 120mph at night, the light from the headlights would travel at either 186,000mps if light's speed wasn't affected by the speed of the light source or 186,000.03mps if it was.

So basically we have two choices: assume the light will travel at 300,000km/sec faster than the light source (meaning the light is really going twice the speed of light...would light that goes 2x the speed of light be twice as bright as ordinary, 1x the speed of light light?), or believe it can't go faster than 300,000 km/sec, which would make the car catch up to the light as it came out of the headlights, meaning no light would be seen. (It would be like unwinding a roll of fruit leather into your mouth...is the roll of fruit leather really 20 feet long, because that's how much was there, or two inches long because that's all you ever see?)

Or rather, that's how it is with ordinary, slow motion, i.e. motion that does not come anywhere near the speed of light. If I throw a ball forward at 60 MPH in a car going 60, it goes 120 relative to stationary observers. But at (virtually) infinite speeds, like that of light, strange things happen, and motion is no longer relative. Light does not go at 300,000 km/sec (approximately) relative to those in motion with the light source and not to others or vice versa, but at 300,000 km/sec (approximately) relative to everyone, no matter if they're at the light source, or down on the ground, or on the very different-moving planet of Mars. What, is that even possible? To be sure, from what little I know of Einstein's relativity, it is not only possible, but the way it always happens. For more info, see the link below, Lecture 23: Special Relativity.

Answer 6

it is imposible to go at light speed 99.99999999% of light speed can be reached though so if you went that speed the light would still be faster than you, and still reflect off thigs and return to your eyes so yes, and btw I AM 12 YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS

Answer 7

You'll see the beam of light move out ahead of you at the speed of light.

Also, anybody in the path of the light from your headlights will see the beam of light

from your headlights move past him at the speed of light, no matter how fast he may

be moving.

Answer 8

Your headlights would come on and the light would speed ahead of the car at 186,282 miles per second.

Answer 9

Whatever speed you're traveling, when you turn your lights on, you see the light

leave you at the speed of light ... same speed regardless of how fast you're moving.

Answer 10

Sense you are going the speed of light the lights would not come on but the switch will still work.