Table of Contents
Can you throw something at the speed of light?
Only massless things travel at the speed of light. So no throwing, no baseballs, and no arms with which to throw them.
What happens when you throw a ball in a moving car?
When a person throws a ball up in a moving vehicle, say, a train, the ball does come straight back to thrower as though the train were at rest. So if the train moves with a constant velocity, the ball will exactly return to the thrower.
What happens if a needle hits Earth at the speed of light?
The mass of our planet is an immense 5.9 x 10^24 kg. The needle is moving at the speed of light, or around 300,000,000 m/s. And such a wave of kinetic energy, combined with the impact of the collision, will probably destroy our planet and all life on it.
What is the speed of the ball with respect to me?
In particular, the speed of the ball with respect to me will be less 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), but at speeds close to the speed of light the effect becomes very pronounced.
Is a tennis ball moving at the speed of light?
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 tennis ball will hit you simultaneously. If this is the case, however, then the tennis ball would have been moving at a speed of 0 m/s with respect to me.
What does it mean to travel at the speed of light?
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.
Can a car with mass travel at the speed of light?
Your question contradicts Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity which states that no object with mass CAN travel at, or above, the speed of light (c). As your car approaches c, its resistance to acceleration (mass) increases so that it would take an impossibly infinite force to actually reach c.