You must log in or register to comment.
I have a dollar store laser pointer than can also travel at the speed of light
Pssh, I have a 30 year old flashlight that can do the same.
Wait until you learn how old my sun is
Your sun’s light can travel at the speed of light?
-
Claims to travel at the speed of light.
-
Still takes eight minutes to get here.
Sus.
-
Wait, how do you make the laser pointer travel at the speed of light? I assume it has some mass.
That’s impressive. Having a non-photon mass traveling at the speed of light would break our understanding of physics. Get that laser pointer to the lab ASAP
At the speeds it’s moving I imagine we already lost it.
The laser pointer can travel the light of speed? If you turn it on, does the laser not come out of the laser pointer?
The laser and the laser pointer are both traveling away from each other at the speed of light, so from the pointer’s perspective the laser is traveling at twice the speed of light.
You are being downvoted as if your point was offensive or harmful. You are wrong, but it’s totally counter intuitive and I think this is a mistake that everyone makes when studying introductory physics. This would be correct for anything moving at relatively low speeds. But when you’re talking about light, or anything that goes so fast that “percentage of the speed of light” starts being a useful unit to describe their speed, this concept starts being a bit weirder.
This is actually the basic principle of Einstein’s theory of relativity: the speed of light (in a vacuum) is the same for all observers, regardless of their frame of reference. That means that if the laser pointer emits a laser, the light is moving away from the pointer at the speed of light. If the pointer itself is moving at a speed reeeeeally close to the speed of light… Then the laser will STILL be traveling away from the pointer at the speed of light. And if you, an observer in a frame, see the pointer moving at near the speed of light emit a laser… The laser that the laser emitted is also traveling at the speed of light from your point of view.
And there’s no wordplay here. I don’t mean that it’s light, so of course any speed it travels at is the speed of light. I mean that if you measure its speed from any reference frame, you will get around 300000000 m/s, or around 671 million miles per hour. No matter if you are also traveling at near light speed.
It’d be impressive if they fire it at like half the speed of light
I mean, any other non-c speed really.
Actually, c is the speed of light in a vacuum, but light travels slower through a medium, like air. So lasers shot through air will actually travel slower than c.
(For anyone curious, the speed of light in earth air is like 99.97% as fast as in vacuum)
Bunch of nerds in this thread.
You’re in science_memes what did you expected?
hot science girls
Where?
exactly where they should be.
A laser strong enough to be used as a weapon will probably not leave a lot of medium on its path.
But the front-most part will still travel at less than c. It will just speed-up after a while.
I’m curious. What happens to the medium? Does it simply get pushed aside? Or pushed along? Or will it eat up some energy and react to something else?
Much like lightning, a powerful enough laser will ionize the air. That ionized air is hot and rises, just like the ionized gasses from combustion.
A powerful laser will look like a beam of fire.
Maybe it’s going to be space lasers.
Do you know what the religious affiliation of these space lasers will be?
Would you accept 10,000 times slower than the speed of light?
Still too fast to dodge.
Pffft. Amateur.
According to the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, the same people also write about politics, environment and society.
That sounds neat, I won’t look it up
It was coined by Michael Crichton, you know, the man behind the Jurassic Park. Big Dino man can’t lie. And if they lie they are instantly forgiven.
He was a anthropogenic climate change denier. I guess you can forgive him instantly but I don’t.
I missed that thing in his biography and that link looks like an excessive explanation to what you’ve mentioned: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/michael-crichton-and-global-warming/
I’m more concerned that it looks like a laser turret from Portal.
The army trembling when I bring a mirror
NOW YOU FUCKED UP!
World around
Around the world
World around
Around the world
SUPER.
HOT.
Impressive. The future is awesome! Can we maybe apply this to regular light too? Maybe even green light? Or purple? I’m so excited.
When you go from green to purple, the light gets more excited too.
deleted by creator
Is there a way to not?
The medium that the laser goes through could slow it down, but it would still be insanely fast.
It would also still be the speed of light. Always is, unless you specify ‘in a vacuum’ every time.
The real fun starts when things move faster than the speed of light, that’s when you get Cherenkov radiation!
Adding to the fun - The light is still going the same speed within the medium, but it’s bumping into more things. Those collisions divert the light, lengthening the distance it travels through something like 1 cm of glass vs 1 cm in a vacuum. It changes the time it takes to travel through glass rather than the speed at which the light is moving.
At least that’s what I remember from a YouTube video.
Yes that’s it! Thanks for the link!!
I have wifi router that emits microwaves at the speed of light.
I have lightning fast wifi at home
Elections are slower than light waves so technically you have a slow, shitty router, but at least it can electrocute people so that’s something.
This is why I support the Empire. In a dictatorship there’s no waiting for elections.
But electrocutions are something dif… Never mind.
