The other day, someone asked me a question about traveling at
nearly the speed of light - but also having something rotate around the
device or vehicle. In that case, something rotating around would
actually be going faster than the speed light, if the object in motion
was nearly there. In theory this could be possible. Then, recently I
heard a joke on the radio which asked the question; "if you are
traveling at the speed of the light in your car, and you turn the lights
on, would there be any illumination?"
The answer is yes, and the
reason has to do with Einstein's theory of relativity. Further, this can
be tested by the fact that when you are in your car, you are already
moving quite fast - even if you are park with the lights on. This is
because the Earth is spinning at 600 miles per hour, and the Earth is
going around the Sun at 42,000 miles an hour, and the sun is going
around the galaxy at another huge clip. In this case if you drove around
in a circle, your light would shine at different amounts and distances
as you turned around. However, we know that doesn't happen, don't we -
right so, this proves Einstein's theory of relativity, and answers the
question which was posed by the radio station.
Now then, what
about the individual who asked me the question about traveling near the
speed of light, but also having something rotate around you? Think of it
like a rotor blade in a helicopter, as the helicopter is moving forward
and the rotor blade is advancing on one side, it is going faster than
the helicopter by quite a bit, whereas the rotor blade as it comes back
the other side is going slower than the advancing stroke - relative to
the forward motion. In aviation we know as we reach a certain speed this
causes the aircraft to want to spin around on its axis.
Therefore,
if you are traveling at nearly the speed of light, and had something
rotating around to, it would cause the object to spin at a high rate of
speed. We also know in the case of objects which spin without a
counter-rotating offset, that sometimes they make a curved path, like a
baseball which is thrown in as a curveball. Perhaps you might enjoy
thinking about this, and reasoning the physics behind this type of
motion at ungodly speeds, such as the speed of light. There's a lot more
to learn, and a lot to study. Indeed I hope you will please consider
all this and think on it.
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