h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah, the power of a LAN...

lots of downloads in such little time...

Who?? Me or ploppy??

Would be kinda fun though...

But I don't have car, so I approach parking spaces from the passenger seat or by foot!

headlights in this theoretical car wouldn't be any use anyway, as if you were travelling at light speed, assuming of course that you had a) somehow found a way of acheiving zero mass and b) got the car to start (well it is a rover after all ), you would see only a distorted image of what was ahead of you (in other words you would have only a 180 degree field of vision) as all the photons emitted/reflected by objects behind you would have to travel faster than light [assuming non-relativistic motion that is, but then achieving light speed unless you are a particle is, according to relativity, impossible anyway] to catch up with you and the photons from objects ahead of you would either hit you head on (and thus produce a clear image if they weren't blue-shifted so much that they impacted on your car as gamma or x-rays) or hit you at any position that wasn't head on, most likely very red-shifted or too warped to make any sense of. >pant<. see Einstein's mirror conundrum for more info.

YOUNG EINSTIEN that movie was very funny

I've been told that if you travel, say to Jupiter, at the speed of light, it would seem to the people back on earth that you use some two or three hours, but to you it'll seem like you went all that way at the blink of an eye. Maybe that's right or not? I don't know. Any suggestions?

weeeellll.... yes, if you take the theory of the twins paradox literally is suppose it would be like that. time, or at least the effects of time (our perception of time that is) slows down as you approach light speed; according to the theory of relativity. this probably means that what you've heard is correct. you would percieve the time interval to be shorter than observers on earth would.

Bit of a dose of Red Dwarf here:

"You're travelling at the speed of light, what's the stopping distance?"

(Sic)"Four years, three months."

"And thinking-time?"

"A fortnight."

I know someone's bound to correct me on this entry as I'm going from memory. If this isn't dead on, it's very close. This dialogue is (mis)quoted from the "Backwards" episode.

Fruitbat

a week last thursday,give or take a year or so and depending if you pick up your saver point's!

If you were travailing in a car at half the speed of light and you were on a crash course with a similar car cumin in the opposite direction .
would you crash or would you end up when you started and get a chance to avoid it?

Damn!!! I don't remember that at all well!!

Ummm...in reply to previous message:

Would you "feel" that a shorter time had gone past, or would you just "percieve" that time had gone slower?

You catchin' ma drift?? Mmmmm...chocolate!!

At light speed, (or any speed in between), time for you is constant, an hour is an hour, a day is a day, it's only for everyone else that the time appears to run different, but they don't know that!.

A few years ago, there were two very accurate clocks, in perfect sync, one at sea level and the other flown in an aircraft as fast as they could go, after some time, the two clocks were compared and it was found that the clock that had been on the aircraft was behind the other clock, (we're talking nanoseconds here) this proved that time changed at different velocities.

Dark chocolate or light chocolate?

I think we might have time for both

*Adds some milk choccy to the plate and trades (at light speed, of course ) for a bit of dark*

I thought it was half the speed of light???

That was for the Red Dwarf reference by the way...

If you go at the speed of light and therefor aquire infinite mass, and (does infinite mass = infinite gravity?) and that mass's gravitational pull bends light.. uhm... would you go in a circle?

Yes you could put headlights on your car it would be seen lightyears away,coming to you but would you still see them after they went by ??
I heard light speed is only as fast as you can think.?

I dunno... did you time that last thought?

You would become a black hole

Or a geek. We geeks are always running round in ever decreasing circles until we disappear up our own fundamental orifice.