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If a car is travelling faster than the speed of light, do the headlights still work? If you can help because i really need to know i am going on a trip with my car tomorrow!

Qmechanic
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NicktehPro
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    A car will never travel faster than the speed of light, let alone at the speed of light. You will need an infinite amount of energy to get your car to move at the speed of light. Enjoy your trip! –  Feb 29 '16 at 21:54
  • First of all guys don't down vote my question i am just wondering. Second i meant if it was possible for something to travel faster than the speed of light – NicktehPro Feb 29 '16 at 21:56
  • @NicktehPro: If it was possible for something to travel faster than light then the laws of physics would be other than the ones we know. So this question has no answer. –  Feb 29 '16 at 22:07
  • @NicktehPro. While I didn't downvote, note that downvotes aren't punishments; rather, they are usually indicators of whether a question is good/useful/on-topic. Since this question is basically, "What would happen if the laws of physics are different than they are?", it is decidedly off-topic. – march Feb 29 '16 at 22:19
  • Possible duplicate of http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/1557/accelerating-particles-to-speeds-infinitesimally-close-to-the-speed-of-light – RedGrittyBrick Feb 29 '16 at 22:53
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    This question does not show any research effort. – Alfred Centauri Feb 29 '16 at 23:45
  • I'm tempted to upvote for the second sentence. – Reinstate Monica -- notmaynard Mar 01 '16 at 20:58

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Google tachyons. That's about the best you can do.

With our current understanding, any particle that has mass must travel slower than the speed of light. Any massless particles must travel at the speed of light.

Additionally the speed of light is constant relative to the observer. If your car were traveling at 99% of the speed of light, the light leaving your car would be escaping your headlights at the speed of light relative to you. (A stationary observer would also see the light escaping at the speed of light, but only 1% the speed of light faster than you, hence the need for Lorentz transformations).

As for faster than light travel, there is no evidence that it occurs with any particles in the detectable universe. With that in mind, good luck with your road trip tomorrow.

Jonathan Wheeler
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