What do you see at light speed?

In summary, at light speed you see everything as it would appear to an observer on Earth that is moving with you. Everything appears to move more slowly than you and objects appear to move behind you, move away from you, or move in other directions than you. This is due to the relativistic effects of time and length contraction.
  • #1
Raptor483
3
0
Maybe this has been answered before, but when you approach the speed of light what do you see out of your eyes in your frame of reference. Now I have seen websites with animations of what it looks like when you approach c, but I don't understand how you can see what you see like that. I think of when you speed up that everything goes by you really fast and it goes behind you or it moves away from you according to your direction of travel. Why do you see all these distortions and slowing down objects when you are traveling at light speed. I mean if you can go 186,000 miles/per sec. than you would be away from the Earth in a instant, so why do you still see things around you from earth?
 
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  • #2
If you were traveling near light speed, you would indeed see the entire Earth go by "in a flash". You'd need a (very!) high-speed camera that you could watch in slow motion in order to see (in retrospect) what had happened while you were flying by.

If your camera could capture a million frames per second, you'd move almost 1000 ft between frames (even more if you had significant time dilation) if you were moving at near light velocity.

The mathetmatics of what you would see if you had the capability to watch it in such "slow motion" has been discussed here in the past, but I'm not sure if you want to get into that much detail. If you do, search physicsforum (and the WWW) for the phrase "Terrell rotation". The physicsforum search can be accessed from the toolbar near the top of the page.
 
  • #3
The question of what you would see at light speed isn't really meaningful, because on object traveling at light speed doesn't have a reference frame of its own, and a clock which approaches light speed will get arbitrarily close to being completely frozen in our frame, with the distance between any two points on its journey getting arbitrarily close to zero in its frame (so from its point of view, the time to cross between any two landmarks at a given distance apart in our frame, like our galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy, will approach zero). But for some good visualizations of what things would look like as you travel at some large fraction of light speed, check out this page:

http://www.anu.edu.au/Physics/Searle/

Also see What would a relativistic interstellar traveller see?
 
  • #4
Raptor483 said:
Maybe this has been answered before, but when you approach the speed of light what do you see out of your eyes in your frame of reference.
It depends on what you're looking at of course. I forgot how things actually "look" outside the window. Objects appear rotated/distorted as I recall. Look up the term "Terell rotation" and see what you get.

Pete
 
  • #5
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  • #6
Raptor483 said:
Maybe this has been answered before, but when you approach the speed of light what do you see out of your eyes in your frame of reference. Now I have seen websites with animations of what it looks like when you approach c, but I don't understand how you can see what you see like that. I think of when you speed up that everything goes by you really fast and it goes behind you or it moves away from you according to your direction of travel. Why do you see all these distortions and slowing down objects when you are traveling at light speed. I mean if you can go 186,000 miles/per sec. than you would be away from the Earth in a instant, so why do you still see things around you from earth?


The distortions happen because lengths get contracted only in the
direction you are moving, not to the sides. If you squeeze one space
coordinate but not the other two, you tend to "pancake" what you would
otherwise see.

Also, time is being affected but for all directions, not just the forward one.


This is one of those case were the equations should be studied until
they make complete physical sense. (Don't try that with a quantum
Psi function...)
 
  • #7
Only objects which have a high relative velocity to your spaceship will appear distorted. The objects traveling with you or those with a small relative velocity will be unaffected by your speed.
 
  • #8
if v = c then L = 0 which means you won't see anything, and nothing can see you.
 

FAQ: What do you see at light speed?

1. What is light speed and how fast is it?

Light speed, also known as the speed of light, is the fastest speed at which energy can travel. It is approximately 299,792,458 meters per second, or 186,282 miles per second. This means that light can travel around the Earth 7.5 times in just one second!

2. Can humans travel at light speed?

As of now, it is not possible for humans to travel at light speed. The fastest speed that humans have achieved is around 24,790 miles per hour during the Apollo 10 mission. To reach light speed, an object would need infinite energy, which is currently not possible.

3. What would happen if you were to see something at light speed?

If you were able to see something at light speed, it would appear to be frozen in time. This is because light travels so quickly that it would take zero time for it to reach your eyes, making it appear as if the object is not moving at all. This phenomenon is known as time dilation.

4. How does light speed affect our perception of time?

According to Einstein's theory of relativity, time appears to slow down as an object approaches the speed of light. This means that if you were traveling at light speed, time would slow down for you and you would experience time differently than someone who is not moving at such a high speed.

5. Is there anything in the universe that can travel at light speed?

Yes, light itself travels at light speed. In fact, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. This is because as an object approaches the speed of light, its mass increases and it would require infinite energy to continue accelerating. This is known as the theory of special relativity.

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