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As others have said, the speed of light is "broken" in many instances... heck you can do it as well... simply take a flash light, point it out and spin spin spin! The radial velocity of the light beam is faster than "c"


as fun as that idea is, it doesn't make sense, because the beam of light isn't an object. the photons are still moving at exactly the speed of light (as Einstein would have you think). they don't spin around with the flashlight.

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Arriving somewhere before even leaving got my mind a bit twisted though, but I guess what they mean is that because we need light in order to see things, we would see the thing that moved at it's new location before the light of it's old location is totally exhausted so to speak

under the laws of Newtonian physics you're absolutely right, and that's what makes most sense.

however, by Einstein's theory of Relativity, time is dependent on relative speed while the relative speed of light to everyone is constant (and therefore is different to everyone who's moving at different speeds, because it is always 'c' relative to them; this brings about sci-fi ideas of alternate universes), and that time as it appears to be experienced by one object (as well as mass and inversely length) dilates according to its relative speed to the observer (though this is only really apparent at very-near light-speeds).

basically, time is infinitely slowed down (ie, stopped) for something moving at the speed of light exactly, and so the idea is that time would reverse for something moving beyond the speed of light. however, the formula doesn't hold for that because time would need to become a complex number.

fastlane is absolutely right, though, that light-particles don't have mass (or at least no rest-mass -- they obtain momentum through their speed and their frequency which determines how penetrating they are, which is why gamma rays are dangerous and radio waves aren't). like he said, its only considered a problem for anything that has mass, because that object's mass dilates (becomes bigger) approaching infinity as the speed of light is approached, requiring an infinite amount of force (F = ma) to accelerate it that high. anything of such a high mass would theoretically become a black-hole. it's all relative, though. someone approaching the speed of light would see everything else approaching the speed of light (relative to them), obtaining infinite mass and becoming black-holes. so in both alternate observations everything's doomed

but that's all just according to Einstein. most examples ignore the mass dilation and just play with time dilation, because that's groovier . tests seem to support his theory of Relativity but i won't bother making some sort of decision because there's way too much to think about.

anyway, that's high-school physics for ya ^^

julz

Formerly known as JulzMighty.
I made KarBOOM!