Thursday, December 4, 2014

special relativity - (Almost) double light speed


Let's say we have $2$ particles facing each other and each traveling (almost) at speed of light.


example


Let's say I'm sitting on #$1$ particle so in my point of view #$2$ particle's speed is (almost) $c+c=2c$, double light speed? Please say why I am incorrect :)




EDIT: About sitting me is just example, so in point of view of #1 particle, the second one moves at (almost) $c+c=2c$ speed?




Answer



One of the results of special relativity is that a particle moving at the speed of light does not experience time, and thus is unable to make any measurements. In particular, it cannot measure the velocity of another particle passing it. So, strictly speaking, your question is undefined. Particle #1 does not have a "point of view," so to speak. (More precisely: it does not have a rest frame because there is no Lorentz transformation that puts particle #1 at rest, so it makes no sense to talk about the speed it would measure in its rest frame.)


But suppose you had a different situation, where each particle was moving at $0.9999c$ instead, so that that issue I mentioned isn't a problem. Another result of special relativity is that the relative velocity between two particles is not just given by the difference between their two velocities. Instead, the formula (in one dimension) is


$$v_\text{rel} = \frac{v_1 - v_2}{1 - \frac{v_1v_2}{c^2}}$$


If you plug in $v_1 = 0.9999c$ and $v_2 = -0.9999c$, you get


$$v_\text{rel} = \frac{1.9998c}{1 + 0.9998} = 0.99999999c$$


which is still less than the speed of light.


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