• Hildegarde@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Nothing. The speed of light is so fast that our intuitive understanding of the world doesn’t apply, when going that fast.

    Light travels at the speed of light relative to you. It doesn’t matter where you are or how fast you’re moving light will travel around you at the speed of light.

    Imagine you’re in a space ship passing a planet at half the speed of light. You would measure your headlight’s beam as travelling away from you at the speed of light. Someone on the planet would see you going 0.5c and your headlights going 1c, and would conclude your headlight beam is traveling away from you at half the speed of light.

    How does the universe deal with these contradictory observations? Time dilation. Time will flow at a different rate on your ship than the planet. The universe is weird at high speeds.

    As far as your speed, it would be the same as turning on the headlights of your car. The lights will slow you down, but such a small amount you need a special lab to even measure it.