what would it feel like to travel at the speed of light
The original question was: If I'chiliad moving at the speed of light towards you and I throw a tennis ball at you (at, say, 5 m/southward), what do you detect? Will I hit yous first, the lawn tennis ball, or both at the same time, or will something else happen entirely? The problem that I'm having thinking nigh this is that if the tennis ball did hit you get-go, then it would have been moving faster than the speed of light (relative to you). On the other hand, if it were moving at the speed of light relative to you, then it was moving at the same speed as me relative to you, thus both myself and the lawn tennis ball will hit you simultaneously. If this is the case, however, and so the tennis brawl would take been moving at a speed of 0 grand/s with respect to me.
Mathematician: First of all, let me signal out that you lot will never travel at the speed of light (come across this for details). It would take an infinite amount of energy to become anything with mass (e.g. you or your mama) going at that speed. Burning all the oil (and plants, and animals) on our planet and converting them into kinetic free energy would get yous going really fast, but would give you exactly 0% of the total energy that you would actually demand to go going that speed (since any number divided by infinity is zero). But that doesn't mean that information technology wouldn't exist fun to speculate virtually what would happen if you were going at light speed.
Due to a relativistic event known equally time dilation, the faster that you motion with respect to some object O, the more time slows down for the object O (from your perspective). This isn't but an issue of y'all seeing clocks attached to O tick slowly, they actually Exercise tick slowly from your vantage point (no experiment you could peradventure do would conclude otherwise). There is symmetry though. You lot moving past O at 10,000 miles per hour is duplicate (equally far as the laws of physics are concerned) from O moving by yous at 10,000 miles per hour. That means, from the perspective of a person strapped to O, clocks attached to you are ticking slowly (i.e. your fourth dimension is slowed down). As you approach the speed of lite (with respect to O), this fourth dimension dilation outcome becomes more and more pronounced. When you are exactly AT the speed of calorie-free (incommunicable, but bare with me) no time whatsoever volition elapse for O (i.e. a clock strapped to O volition cease ticking completely) from your perspective. The issue of this is that yous'll go wherever you are going without witnessing any time pass for anything non moving along with you. One reason this is really trippy is considering if we view light coming from a distance object (such as a far away sun), from our perspective information technology might accept taken years to become from us. But from the perspective of the photon (i.e. the calorie-free particle) no time will have elapsed on the journeying! Yep, true physics is even weirder than crazy person made upwards physics.
A mayhap fifty-fifty wackier effect crops up as the effect of length contraction (another consequence of relativity). If you move towards object O at a fast speed you volition detect that O will be compressed (i.e. shrunk) along the direction of your motility. Then if O is a hippo, and y'all are going fast plenty, information technology will look like one damn apartment hippo.
Um, something similar this I guess?
Every bit you arroyo the speed of calorie-free, this effect becomes increasingly pronounced, and at at the speed of light itself O will have zero length in the direction you are traveling. In detail, if you are on a directly race track, and traveling at the speed of calorie-free, the race track volition exist compressed to zero length so that the starting line and the finishing line will be on top of each other. The race will be over equally soon every bit it begins.
Some other consequence of light speed travel is that you lot'd become the most dangerous affair imaginable (motion over, Chuck). Since your mass is positive, infinite speed implies that your momentum is infinite. Hence, if y'all crashed into annihilation (and you would…afterwards all, from your perspective the universe is flatter than a pancake in the direction you're heading) it would get hurtled at insane speeds (since it would absorb some of your momentum). Of class, you'd also be expressionless pretty much instantly equally you collided with object after object (each traveling at the speed of light with respect to yous). And no, armor wouldn't assistance.
Okay, then now to address the original question. What would happen if while traveling at the speed of light towards me y'all attempted to throw a ball at me? The answer is that you would have no time to actually do the throwing, because from your perspective you would encounter me instantly. At which bespeak, if I had any ninja skills, I would probably suspension those out. If you were traveling at most the speed of low-cal (with respect to me), but not quite at it, and then threw the ball at 5 m/s (with respect to you) in my direction, the velocities would not simply add together like you would wait based on Newtonian mechanics. Instead, you'd have to apply relativistic velocity improver which is a chip more complicated. In particular, the speed of the ball with respect to me will beless than the sum of your speed and 5 m/s. At low speeds this effect is not noticeable (speeds are additive to very close approximation), just at speeds shut to the speed of light the effect becomes very pronounced.
Source: https://www.askamathematician.com/2010/11/q-what-would-you-experience-if-you-were-going-the-speed-of-light/
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