Challenging the Speed of Light: The Curious Case of Opposing Photons

[tradexy]

travelling at 2C

To imagine what it would be like to see an object traveling at 2C. Then thinK how a fighter pilot traveling at Mach 2 would hear another fighter plane traveling in the opp direction (but at a far distance) at Mach 2. The sound (waves) would be the same, but he would hear them later relative to his position or his vision of the other airplane.
Apply this to traveling faster than the speed of light. Just a dellay, nothing more to it!

 

[pervect]

To imagine what it would be like to see an object traveling at 2C. Then thinK how a fighter pilot traveling at Mach 2 would hear another fighter plane traveling in the opp direction (but at a far distance) at Mach 2. The sound (waves) would be the same, but he would hear them later relative to his position or his vision of the other airplane.
Apply this to traveling faster than the speed of light. Just a dellay, nothing more to it!

This reminds me of an old saying - to every complex problem, there is an answer that's simple, obvious, and wrong.

It is, in fact, easy to imagine the universe working in the way described above. But although we can imagine it, it's not the way the actual universe works. If we imagined that we changed reference frames via the Gallilean transforms, velocities would add linearly. But it turns out the way the actual universe works is that we must change reference frames via the Lorentz transforms, not the Gallilean transorms - and as a consequence, velocities do not add in a simple linear manner, and there is a universal speed limit, the speed of light.

We realized that there was a problem with physics when experimental results for the measured speed of light gave unexpected results. There were many experiments which showed the problem, one of the most famous and influential was the Michelson-Morley experiment. Einstein showed us the solution, that the way to resolve these problems was to replace the Gallilean transform with the Lorentz transform.

 

[paw]

This reminds me of an old saying - to every complex problem, there is an answer that's simple, obvious, and wrong.

I haven't heard that one before. I'll remember it for sure, considering how true it is.

There may be a corollary to that. Whenever you think you have a simple and obvious answer to a complex problem it's probably wrong. At least that's my impression based on personal experience.