Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
If traveling at the speed of light, would your headlights shine?
Dear Matthew:
Okay, here's one that keeps me up nights. If you were driving a car traveling at the speed of light and you turned on the headlamps, would any light project ahead of you? And would it make a difference if you used the high beams?
-- Marianne, Escondido
Could this be from our "Huh? Wha...Where Am I? How Long Have I Been Out? Oh, Man, and I'm Late for Physics Class" file? If you do one day find yourself traveling at the speed of light, pull over to the shoulder, whip out the cell phone, lock the doors, and call the nearest theoretical physicist. (To reach their emergency line, dial pi.) I assume you know that the word from the science guys is that you can't travel at or beyond the speed of light. That's their story, and they're sticking to it. Unless you count the believers in tachyons, our favorite hypothetical subatomic particles that will move at speeds beyond light and can be found in mathematical calculations and in "healing tachyon-radiation crystals" currently very hot in natural-remedy emporiums. (Maybe if you sit under one today, it cures the headache you had yesterday?)
If you're driving the Mariannemobile and the speedometer hits 186,000 miles per second, light will still be emitted from your hypothetical headlights. As it strikes objects, they will look blue because the light will be shifted to a higher frequency at the blue end of the visible spectrum. Go fast enough and it heads beyond blue into the X-ray frequencies. At that point you can't see anything because there's no visible light to reflect off other objects. If it's daytime, you'll be sticking your head out the window, gawking like a retriever at the weirdness around you as all the blue objects flatten like playing cards, compress, and morph into a long tunnel. Everything behind you would be red (the slow end of the spectrum, as you move away from things) then disappears as light slows into infrared. At least that's how it pencils out, according to the physics phanatics.
Here's something you might be interested in.
If traveling at the speed of light, would your headlights shine?
If traveling at the speed of light, would your headlights shine?
Dear Matthew:
Okay, here's one that keeps me up nights. If you were driving a car traveling at the speed of light and you turned on the headlamps, would any light project ahead of you? And would it make a difference if you used the high beams?
-- Marianne, Escondido
Could this be from our "Huh? Wha...Where Am I? How Long Have I Been Out? Oh, Man, and I'm Late for Physics Class" file? If you do one day find yourself traveling at the speed of light, pull over to the shoulder, whip out the cell phone, lock the doors, and call the nearest theoretical physicist. (To reach their emergency line, dial pi.) I assume you know that the word from the science guys is that you can't travel at or beyond the speed of light. That's their story, and they're sticking to it. Unless you count the believers in tachyons, our favorite hypothetical subatomic particles that will move at speeds beyond light and can be found in mathematical calculations and in "healing tachyon-radiation crystals" currently very hot in natural-remedy emporiums. (Maybe if you sit under one today, it cures the headache you had yesterday?)
If you're driving the Mariannemobile and the speedometer hits 186,000 miles per second, light will still be emitted from your hypothetical headlights. As it strikes objects, they will look blue because the light will be shifted to a higher frequency at the blue end of the visible spectrum. Go fast enough and it heads beyond blue into the X-ray frequencies. At that point you can't see anything because there's no visible light to reflect off other objects. If it's daytime, you'll be sticking your head out the window, gawking like a retriever at the weirdness around you as all the blue objects flatten like playing cards, compress, and morph into a long tunnel. Everything behind you would be red (the slow end of the spectrum, as you move away from things) then disappears as light slows into infrared. At least that's how it pencils out, according to the physics phanatics.
Comments