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

Would the rule of leaving two seconds between your vehicle and the one in front still apply?, because that would mean the vehicle in front is at least 372,000 miles away, a simple glance down at your speedo could have some interesting results.

And what about traffic lights?, the red light would be shifted towards blue as you aproached them and then the green light would be shifted towards red as you see them in your rear view mirror, and what colour would cats eyes be...

Would you need to put headlights on a car travelling at the speed of light. Right no more blunders this time, if I remember rightly, light always travels at 186,000 miles a second, it is a constant that always remains the same. Any light that is observed would still appear to be travelling at 186,000 miles a second no matter how fast the car would be travelling, there would just be a shift in colour, a blue shift or a red shift depending on whether the light you were observing was either in front of you or behind you. The light from the headlights would also be travelling at the speed of light so theroretically it would leave the car at the speed of light and carry on in front of the car, so theoretically headlights would make a difference. I think thats right, I,m sure if it isn't someone will post a reply to put me right...please do cos this question has been bugging me for days.

Your right that light always travels at the same speed 187,500 miles or 300,000 Km a sec.
However fast your going or however fast the object sending out the light is going you'll always see the light travelling at the same speed. the diffence is that somebody who is in your car wouldn't agree with someone on the roadside as to how far you've gone or how long it took you. The change in the colour is due to something called the doppler effect, that is the light gets spread out (and apears red shifted 'cos of a longer wavelength) if you are moveing away from the light, or squashed together (blue shifted) if your going towards it. the upshot of it is that the headliights will be useful because for you there won't apear to be any problem as, as you get closer to the speed of light the rest of the universe apears to slow down relative to you but the light from your headlights and the reflection back to you will move at the same speed as it always does, it's just that you won't agree with anyone else about how far away the things you see with the light are, and the lights won't be any use for telling anyone that your comming because you'll arrive at the same time as the light. These kind of questions can get very complicated and you can do enough stuff on it to fill an entire uni course.

Erm.. Simple glances at speedos always cause interesting problems... even at 0 kph

Cheers phoenix, I,m glad I got that one right.

Head lights would not be useful for a simple reason. As sonn as you see the light from the head lights the car would hit you wouldn't it I mean think about it if the car is going as fast as light you would not see the light before the car hit you and you would likle be dead before you could react

Well, you know, life's pretty cheap to that type.

For that matter, the G-force would kill you. But death and reality is beside the point.

Hey! Someone's trying to be serious! Where are the Taste Police when you neeed them?

That would depend entirely on where you plan on driving it (assuming it's airtight and has some means of propulsion independent of solid, and I would think constant, surface to run on).
Remember that the light from the lamps would make their STARTING SPEED from a lamp travelling at light-speed, therefore the light they emit would be travelling at light-speed ALREADY TRAVELLING at light speed...

Second, there would have to be some right fancy gearbox in that car, not to mention motor, just to handle light-speed, so the idea of gearing up or down would be dependent on whatever method of gearing was used to get it to light-speed in the first place. (I imagine this rules out synchro-mesh gearing, popular with Volkswagens; possibly a Porsche or Lamborghini?)

Fruitbat

Assuming you didn't hit anything, and assuming there was a strip of land that encircled the earth, if you traveled at light speed would you drive around the world or shoot into space at it's curve?

That would require the Earth to have a lot more mass, that kind of mass is only found in black holes, it would take a sun of at least ten solar masses, to collapse into a black hole, the vehicle on your long straight road would just keep on going into space, (the same as if you were to shine a laser pointer, they keep on going mostly unaffected by the Earth's pull)

No, the G-force would not necessarily kill you. The amount of G-force would depend on how fast you were accelerating and The Duke of Dunstable didn't specify this in the question.

Given some of the places they end up, they could probably benefit from having some...

They don't talk about up or down much, either. Everythign appears to be on a level....(Yes, I KNOW there's no up or down or sideways in space, but on telly, where viewer orientation matters, it's kinda like a convention. Starships are never seen doing wheelies, falling over sideways or going up or down in relationship to an audience; I think we'd get a big kick out of seeing that...)

Fruitbat

Sounds like you, and everyone here, could do with a healthy dose of Yahoo Serious's story of Einstein and Relativity and Beer, the name of which escapes me for the moment.

Fruitbat

There's always SOME bloody thing, isn't there? Probably just as well Rover isn't planning to build this thing, there are just too many physics problems to contend with and we haven't even started on finding a parking space or what to use as petrol....

Fruitbat

Of course Rover wants to build the thing. They'll market it as the new Range Rover. Range Rovers park where they like, and if one was moving at light speed and had infinite mass, it could easily crush someone else's car and park on the remains. After all, that's what all Range Rover drivers have secretly wanted to do for years. As for petrol, who cares? If you can afford a Range Rover you send the servants out to locate fuel, then it's their problem. You just keep firing your servants until you find one who can get the right fuel. Simple. Whoever said the Class System has no valid function?

But if it was travelling into the parking space at light speed, wouldn't it be a REAL bitch to stop on the other car??

Can you imagine the brakes on that Range Rover!?!??! They'd have to be something like slamming the thing into reverse and hitting the accelerator!

Just as a matter of interest, do you normally approach a parking space at maximum cruising speed? Only, if I tried to park at 130mph I suspect it would be a bit tricky even in my definitely non-warp-speed Volvo.