Can someone settle an argument?
If you are inside a sealed tunnel shaped object travelling through space at the speed of light, would you be able to move forward in that tunnel shaped object?
I think not but my colleague disagrees. He says that because it’s a sealed object then your speed is relative to the object that you’re in. However, I think that the speed of light is a constant regardless of the environment you’re in otherwise you could fire something at the speed of light down the tunnel shaped object which is also travelling at the speed of light and that object would have travelled at twice the speed of light.
Another colleague says that if I’m in a car travelling at 70mph I’m not travelling at 70mph sitting inside the car as I’m in a sealed environment and that backs up my other colleagues theory. However, if the car were to suddenly disappear I would continue moving (albeit briefly and very painfully) at 70mph because I am still moving at 70mph through space. The same applies (I think) to the speed of light – it is a universal constant, not a relative one.
If the sealed enviroment was dark with a light at the rear, you then switch the light on, the light would illuminate the interior of the sealed unit so infact the light inside would be travelling faster than light. The same applies to travelling in a vehicle if it were a coach moving at 70 mph and you were at the back and walked to the front you wold be travelling at faster than the 70 mph that te coach was doing.
So the speed of light is a relative constant and not a universal constant? Surely that means it’s not actually a constant then?
If you are running behing a photon of light and you are doing 5mph then the photon is moving away from you at 3×10^8 m/s. If you were able to run at the velocity of light, then the photon would still be moving away from you at 3×10^8 m/s. You would never be able to catch it up.
It’s not a reasonable proposition. The energy required to get to the speed of light would be prohibitive and you would never reach that speed. The passanger’s time would slow down the closer you got to light speed relative to outside references, say an observer on a stationary craft. You could move forward, but only exceptionally slowly from the outsiders viewpoint and you would never break the speed of light from his perspective or from yours. Turn on a light and from the passangers perspective it would fill the ship instantly. From the external reference it would fill it slowly, never breaking light speed. It only seems to be instant because the passanger is in a different relative time. The light gloops through the room, the passanger is virtually motionless.
PS. I’m guessing.
The answer is that you would not be going faster than the speed of light. According to relativity you cannot add the motions together that way.
The speed of light is constant to the observer; however, speed is a measure of observable distance over observable time it has no real meaning except to the observer. To you the speed of light is relative to the tube so as you walk foward you seem to be moving faster than the tube which to you is stationary.
To the observer you have travelled a greater distance than had you stayed still but it has taken more time to do so, therefore your distance relative to the time it has taken remains the speed of light.
If you are travelling at a constant velocity and proceed to travel a greater distance at the same velocity then time must slow down to compensate.
EU = mc12
It doesn’t matter how fast you chase the commission, you never catch up with the money.
Where EU is the immovable object and (mc) is mass corruption. 12, is the number of years the auditors have refused to sign off the accounts.
So the answer to your question………. “If you are inside a sealed tunnel shaped object travelling through space at the speed of light, would you be able to move forward in that tunnel shaped object?”, ………..is NO, even if the real answer is YES.
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